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Connecting higher education to workplace activities and earnings

Author

Listed:
  • Hung Chau
  • Sarah H Bana
  • Baptiste Bouvier
  • Morgan R Frank

Abstract

Higher education is a source of skill acquisition for many middle- and high-skilled jobs. But what specific skills do universities impart on students to prepare them for desirable careers? In this study, we analyze a large novel corpora of over one million syllabi from over eight hundred bachelors’ granting US educational institutions to connect material taught in higher education to the detailed work activities in the US economy as reported by the US Department of Labor. First, we show how differences in taught skills both within and between college majors correspond to earnings differences of recent graduates. Further, we use the co-occurrence of taught skills across all of academia to predict the skills that will be taught in a major moving forward. Our unified information system connecting workplace skills to the skills taught during higher education can improve the workforce development of high-skilled workers, inform educational programs of future trends, and enable employers to quantify the skills of potential workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Hung Chau & Sarah H Bana & Baptiste Bouvier & Morgan R Frank, 2023. "Connecting higher education to workplace activities and earnings," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(3), pages 1-18, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0282323
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282323
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Peter Arcidiacono, 2005. "Affirmative Action in Higher Education: How Do Admission and Financial Aid Rules Affect Future Earnings?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(5), pages 1477-1524, September.
    3. Raj Chetty & John N Friedman & Emmanuel Saez & Nicholas Turner & Danny Yagan, 2020. "Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(3), pages 1567-1633.
    4. Stephen Johnson, 1967. "Hierarchical clustering schemes," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 32(3), pages 241-254, September.
    5. David J Deming & Kadeem Noray, 2020. "Earnings Dynamics, Changing Job Skills, and STEM Careers," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(4), pages 1965-2005.
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