Navigating the university minor choice: search strategies and the role of choice architecture

Academic trajectory building involves navigating a vast information space to identify potential future pathways. While research on choosing university minors often focuses on the final selection or completed trajectories, the exploration stage is understudied. We argue that digital environments showcasing curriculum options notably impact academic decisions. This study examines learners’ strategies and challenges in navigating a website listing academic minors at a large Russian university. Using a mixed-method approach and expectancy-value theory, we explore how students perceive the opportunity space and the decision-making strategies they use to narrow their options. Through think-aloud interviews, we identify three primary strategies: ‘Professionalizing’ (prioritizing utility and employability), ‘Diversifying’ (emphasizing transferable skills), and ‘Sidestepping’ (focusing on unrelated interests). Quantitative analysis confirms these strategy patterns correlate with students’ academic performance and background, revealing how choice processes may perpetuate educational inequalities. Our findings underscore the need to consider diverse learners’ values and needs when designing educational choice architectures.