[4] Freeman and his collaborators have explored how the tournament model of prizes and funding in the biosciences has favored older researchers and contributed to the degradation of conditions for postdocs and graduate students.

[5] In his early career, Freeman often faced critique for his book The Overeducated American (1976), which suggested that the U.S. labor market would have vast challenges employing the millions of citizens with college diplomas and advanced degrees from the enormous expansion of higher education after World War II.

[citation needed] The high-tech boom of the later 1980s and 1990s reassured most observers that expanding higher education was the trusted route to national economic vitality and achieving the dreams for prosperity sought by millions of individuals.

[6] This re-consideration has gained momentum since the high unemployment and underemployment of college graduates following the Great Recession of 2008 as well as trends in globalization that have led to the off shoring of many jobs done by lawyers, accountants, information technology workers, and other well-educated professionals.

[citation needed] He co-wrote with Joseph R. Blasi and Douglas L. Kruse of Rutgers The Citizen’s Share: Reducing Inequality in the Twenty-first Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), a work that French economist Thomas Piketty credited for tracing how “America used to be based on broad access to wealth and property” and then showing “how to revive” this tradition.