Skills, Majors, and Jobs: Institutional Labor Markets and Higher Education Responsiveness in North Carolina

A key feature of the state attainment goal, and myFutureNC’s work, emphasizes credentials with labor market value. Despite growing work on the evolution of skill demand, little is known about the extent to which college students and postsecondary institutions respond and adapt to these shifts in skill demand. This margin of response is crucial: for the nearly two-thirds of workers who attend college, the most direct way for individuals to build specific skills is through their choice of curriculum and field of study. The strand of work has two main aims: first, the project will characterize the labor markets of the highest relevance to institutions within the UNC System. Second, the project will explore the degree to which students respond to changes in the demand for skills—in terms of course-taking, major (and minor) choices, and other forms of blending courses across subject areas. This project will deepen our understanding of the labor markets served by public colleges across North Carolina as well as the responses of students to changes in labor market demand for various skills