Education Commons^™

Connecting Higher Education To Workplace Activities And Earnings, Hung Chau, Sarah H. Bana, Baptiste Bouvier, Morgan R. Frank

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

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 …