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Skill-Biased Technical Change and the Cost of Higher Education

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  • John Bailey Jones
  • Fang Yang

Abstract

We document the growth in higher education costs and tuition over the past 50 years. To explain these trends, we develop a general equilibrium model with skill- and sector-biased technical change. We assume that higher education suffers from Baumol's (1967) service sector disease, in that the quantity of labor and capital needed to educate a student is constant over time. Finding the model's parameters through a combination of calibration and estimation, we show that it can explain the rise in college costs between 1961 and 2009, along with the increase in college attainment and the increase in the relative earnings of college graduates. We finish by using the model to perform a number of numerical experiments.

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  • John Bailey Jones & Fang Yang, 2012. "Skill-Biased Technical Change and the Cost of Higher Education," Discussion Papers 12-08, University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:nya:albaec:12-08
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    3. Kevin Donovan & Christopher Herrington, 2019. "Factors Affecting College Attainment and Student Ability in the U.S. since 1900," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 31, pages 224-244, January.
    4. Grey Gordon & Aaron Hedlund, 2017. "Accounting for the Rise in College Tuition," NBER Chapters, in: Education, Skills, and Technical Change: Implications for Future US GDP Growth, pages 357-394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. KITAO Sagiri & NAKAKUNI Kanato, 2023. "On the Trends of Technology, Family Formation, and Women's Time Allocation," Discussion papers 23075, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    6. Matsuda, Kazushige, 2020. "Optimal timing of college subsidies: Enrollment, graduation, and the skill premium," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    7. Xiaoxiao Zhou & Ming Xia & Teng Zhang & Juntao Du, 2020. "Energy- and Environment-Biased Technological Progress Induced by Different Types of Environmental Regulations in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-26, September.
    8. Aaron Hedlund & Grey Gordon, 2017. "Accounting for Tuition Increases at U.S. Colleges," 2017 Meeting Papers 1550, Society for Economic Dynamics.

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