The Consequences of Faculty Sexual Misconduct

Faculty sexual misconduct targeted at students is a widespread problem. The consequences of such incidents include direct harm to victims and may also entail a loss to science if students who encounter misconduct become discouraged from continuing their studies in their chosen field. We link publicly available information on degree completion by institution, academic field, and gender to a database of faculty sexual misconduct incidents verified in the media or court cases covering the years from 1983 to 2023. Then, we employ a stacked event study approach to document the extent to which publicly reported faculty sexual misconduct decreases in-field degree completion. Exposure to a field-specific faculty sexual misconduct public report decreases degree completion in that field by 4.7 percent four years after the incident. This decline is driven by reports occurring in 2015 and after, among which we observe a 7.9 percent decline in in-field degree completion. Students exit majors dominated by men, but this shift has little effect on predicted earnings because students shift away from both high- and low-earning majors.