The Growing Allocative Inefficiency of the U.S. Higher Education Sector

James D. Adams, J. Roger Clemmons

NBER Working Paper No. 12683
Issued in November 2006

---- Acknowledgments ----

This paper is part of the Science and Engineering Workforce Project at NBER. The Andrew W. Mellon and Alfred P. Sloan Foundations have generously supported this research. John Marsh provided research assistance and Jason Todd Abaluck provided data on student characteristics. We thank Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Irwin Feller, Amanda Goodall, Richard Jensen, and Donald Vitaliano for comments on earlier drafts. Special appreciation goes to Richard Freeman for support and guidance. This paper has benefited from presentations at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Cornell University, meetings of the NBER-Science and Engineering Workforce Project, and the NBER Higher Education Meetings. Any remaining errors are our responsibility. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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