Rapid technical progress leads to skill obsolescence, yet educational institutions and students are slow to respond to these changes in the labor market. This research project will use a large data set on changes in skill demand and college enrolments by major and the content of majors to investigate two interrelated questions: (i) what skills are associated with each college major and how does skill demand vary over time and space? (ii) how do higher education course-offerings and student course-taking respond to changes in demand for skills? The research will be based on data on all job postings over a time matched with data on all course offering (and their content) in a state. The results can help institutions respond to skill demand by rapidly changing the content of their curricula and educational policy makers plan better. The results will also help guide students not only in their choice of majors but also the courses and skills they choose to acquire in their chosen majors. By providing inputs into policies that align skill needs and skill training in a rapidly changing technological work place, this research will help US educational institutions provide the skills the economy needs, hence lead to rapid economic growth and improved well-being of Americans.
This project will use merged data from the Burning Glass project and the Delaware Cost Project which has department level panel data on credits, courses and faculty as well as individual level data on student course taking, quasi-experimental methods and machine learning techniques to investigate how college students and college administration respond to changes in labor skill demand. Specifically, it investigates what skills are associated with each college major, how within major cross-major skills demand differ across space and through time, and how skill investment responds to changes in skill demand in the labor market. Previous studies have focused on the demand side of skill acquisition; this project will however look at how skill supply (by university providers and students) respond to changes in skill demand by exploring several aspects university curriculum that makes these supply responses possible. The quasi-experimental methods permit causal identification of the effect of changes in skill demand on human capital investment. The project will explore differential responses at lower-division, upper-division, and graduate levels. The results of this research will provide guidance on policies to align skill investment to changes in skill demand and in so doing will provide the needed skills and lead to faster economic growth.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
