CS 269 I : Incentives in Computer Science Lecture # 2 : Stable Matching ∗

Last lecture, we turned a critical eye to the way college admissions are run in the U.S. Could the system be improved? For example, could there be a sensible centralized clearinghouse, like a two-sided analog of the Draw? If so, what would it look like? For inspiration, we are looking at the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), who had to solve a similar problem to assign newly minted medical school graduates to residency programs. We explained the history of the NRMP last time, where in 1952 a committee of medical school students, as an act of protest, proposed a matching procedure to replace the one the was being considered. Their alternative procedure was indeed adopted, and to a large extent survives to this day. This algorithm and its properties are the subject of this lecture.