College Education and Skills for the Future of Work

Although studies of job postings and the skills and knowledge needed for occupations have described the supply and demand side of the job market, few studies have assessed what skills are taught to college students and how they impact job market outcomes. Computational social scientist Morgan Frank and economist Sarah Bana will use a novel dataset of three million university course syllabi to examine skills taught in courses over the last decade. They will match the skills taught at universities to skills and activity profiles of over 700 occupations provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They will then compare these skills across universities within each of field of study to career outcomes, including earnings and career mobility.