Abstract
Skill-biased technological change has advantaged highly educated workers relative to workers with less education. The link between education and skill complementarity with technology is not obvious: differences across institutions and fields of study yield substantial variation in students' skill development, and incentives for institutions to emphasize new skills are theoretically ambiguous. I provide novel evidence of institution responses to changing skill demand using a unique dataset of course descriptions scraped from a diverse sample of colleges and universities in the United States. Course descriptions are a snapshot of a university's offerings and provide insight into its instructional priorities and resources. I find that college courses increasingly emphasized cognitive and social skill development as demand for workers with strong cognitive and social skills grew in the labor market. Between 2012-2020, courses intensive in cognitive or social skills each grew by 11% as a share of total course offerings. The paper provides some of the first analysis of within-institution course supply responses to changes in student and labor market demand.
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