Kevin Stange
Kevin Stange is an Professor of Public Policy and co-director of the Education Policy Initiative at the University of Michigan where he teaches graduate courses in higher education policy, economics, and quantitative methods. He is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and faculty affiliate of the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan.
Professor Stange's research lies broadly in empirical labor and public economics, with a focus on education. He is currently leading projects to better understand how higher education alters students' labor market trajectories and mobility, how postsecondary investment responds to changes in skill demand, and an evaluation of the Michigan Tuition Incentive Program.
He is co-editor of Productivity in Higher Education, which empirically tackles various aspects of measuring performance in the higher education sector. He has also recently helped lead the development of a large new dataset that will enable scholars in diverse fields to examine a multitude of questions about postsecondary education. The College and Beyond II (CBII) Data (with P. Courant, A. Flaster, S. Jekielek, M. Levenstein, T. McKay) contains almost 50 million course records for 1 million students attending 19 universities since 2000 and is available for researchers to access via ICPSR. His prior research includes studies of college enrollment and persistence, community colleges, the importance of amenities in college choice, and the effects of different pricing structures on program/major choice and student credit load. He has also researched changes in the health care workforce and occupational licensing. His research has been published in numerous economics, education, and policy academic journals and featured in popular outlets such as Time, Wall Street Journal, Inside Higher Ed, Chronicle of Higher Ed, Atlantic Monthly, and the Freakonomics blog. He has received research support from the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the WT Grant Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation.
Prior to joining the Ford School, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan. He received undergraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Economics from MIT and his PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Professional affiliations
Associate Professor, University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
Co-Director, Education Policy Initiative
Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economics Research
Affiliate faculty, University of Michigan Marsal Family School of Education
Recent publications
October 2022: College majors affect more than just average earnings (with Andrews, Imberman, Lovenheim)
February 2022: Major Differences: Why some degrees cost colleges more than others (with Hemelt, Furquim, Simon, Sawyer)
September 2021: The Pandemic's Effect on Demand for Public Schools, Homeschooling, and Private Schools (with Musaddiq, Bacher-Hicks, Goodman)
August 2020: Applications for Financial Aid Lagging Among Low-Income Students in Michigan (with Sanchez Zavala, Solanki, Brown) [Coverage in Free Press ]
July 2020: Why the move to online instruction won’t reduce college costs (with Hemelt)
