Working Paper: NBER ID: w29853
Authors: Barbara Biasi; Song Ma
Abstract: This paper studies the dissemination of frontier knowledge through higher education. Applying natural language processing (NLP) techniques to the text of 1.7M university course syllabi and 20M academic articles, we construct the “education-innovation gap,” a measure of a syllabus’s distance from frontier knowledge. Using this measure, we document four new facts. First, courses differ greatly in their education-innovation gap, even after controlling for field, course-level, and time. Second, instructors play an important role in shaping course content. Research-active instructors teach more frontier knowledge, particularly when their research is close to the course topic. Third, access to frontier knowledge is unequal: Schools enrolling more socio-economically advantaged students offer courses with a lower gap. Lastly, students from lower-gap schools are more likely to complete a doctoral degree, produce more patents, and earn more after graduation.
Keywords: education; innovation; knowledge diffusion; socioeconomic status
JEL Codes: I23; I24; I26; J24; O33
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| research activity (C90) | course content (Y20) |
| education-innovation gap (I24) | PhD attainment (Y40) |
| education-innovation gap (I24) | patent production (O39) |
| socioeconomic factors (P23) | education-innovation gap (I24) |
| access to frontier knowledge (O36) | student innovation outcomes (O36) |