Beth Chimera, David Morse, and Alex Ralph—the Ford School’s writing instructors—chat about the skills they teach, why those skills matter for aspiring public servants, and what they love about the work.
S&H: What kinds of writing projects do...
“The striking gap in homeownership is not between college-educated people who did and did not borrow, but between those with and without a college education,” writes Susan Dynarski in “The dividing line between haves and have-nots in homeownership:...
Peter F. Lydens (MPA ’58) provides pro bono management consulting services to the city of Mount Airy, NC. He was Mount Airy’s first city manager (1961–63), and retired there in 2007.
Frank Spence (MPA ’60) was appointed planning commissioner for...
At the annual dinner meeting of The Economic Club of Grand Rapids, Susan M. Collins will host a conversation with Ben Bernanke, who served as chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve System from 2006-2014. The event will take place on Tuesday, May 31 at...
The Washington Post reports that Robert Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation is one of the ten most assigned books at Ivy League universities. Originally published in 1984, the book explores how cooperation can emerge in a world of self-seeking...
On Saturday, April 30, the Ford School honored the accomplishments of 174 new graduates, including 7 doctors of philosophy, 96 masters of public policy, 7 masters of public administration, and 64 bachelors of public policy.
Faculty remarks were...
Policy Talks @ the Ford School
The United States is in a cyber-war. Most Americans don’t know it, and we’re not winning....We are losing this fight because we can’t get over this privacy versus security hangover.
Mike Rogers, former U.S....
This spring, State & Hill magazine focuses on the vitally important theme of rising inequality.Feature stories highlight the work of six Ford School faculty members who are combating inequality in a number of arenas:Susan Dynarski’s quest to remove...
“The mantra in Michigan was a job, a better job, a career: Through work you would experience upward mobility. There was never any evidence that was the case.”
Kristin Seefeldt on the false promise of U.S. welfare reform, The Atlantic, Dec. 1,...
An article by Rumen Iliev (Stanford University) and Bob Axelrod, "Does Causality Matter More Now? Increase in the Proportion of Causal Language in English Texts," was published in Psychological Science in May 2016.
Abstract:
The vast majority...
A “window on the practice” of public policy
FIRST GATHERING. The first Alumni Board meeting was held in Ann Arbor June 8–9, 1990. Eighteen alumni, representing a range of professions and policy interests, met to discuss the curriculum, connect...
As vice president of research and analysis for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF), Menna Demessie (PhD ’10) sifts through data and information on racial disparities and uses her findings to help educate policymakers and their...
ANN ARBOR—Nearly half, or 47 percent, of local leaders from the largest jurisdictions in Michigan say they lack sufficient funding to fight crime in their areas, according to the latest Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS), "Most local officials are...
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen’s novels contain a wealth of commentary on the dramatic economic changes of her era.
University of Michigan undergraduates looking for a friendly and informative introduction to economics...
In 2014, a promising early-literacy program was implemented in seven Michigan charter schools. Over the next year, Brian Jacob, the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy, compared the progress of students who learned reading skills...
Twenty years after South Africa ratified its post-apartheid Constitution, faculty member Yazier Henry reflects on the country’s painful, intractable inequality
Last year, Yazier Henry paid $99 for a DNA testing kit, then dropped a saliva sample...
Women’s employment and earnings have changed dramatically since Mary Corcoran, professor of public policy, political science, and women’s studies, began to explore the issue some four decades ago. When Corcoran wrote her dissertation at MIT in 1975,...
“All this has the feel of a telenovela, the soap operas so popular in Brazil,” Melvyn Levitsky, former U.S. ambassador to Brazil, told the press this week in a story about efforts to impeach Brazil's President, Dilma Rousseff, in the midst of a...
The University of Michigan will launch a new partnership that enables MBA students from one of Latin America's top business schools to earn a master of public administration degree at the Ford School of Public Policy.The dual-degree program, which...
A workaround for cash-strapped governments and underserved populations
Professor Paula Lantz has spent her career focused on how to improve population health and reduce health disparities. “I think it’s shameful that we live in a very wealthy...
On Tuesday, September 1, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. Written by Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin, the book movingly documents the troubling rise of extreme poverty in the wake of America’s 1996...
The Sidney Hillman Foundation has selected $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, by Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin, for the 2016 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism. The prize will be awarded on May 3 at the 66th annual Hillman Prize...
Once, she was a first-generation college student from a working-class suburb of Boston. Now, she is an internationally renowned professor of education policy with the ear of the White House. So Susan Dynarski knows that education can be...
Congratulations to Sam Gringlas, a graduating senior at the Ford School, who has received an Avery and Jule Hopwood Award and a Helen J. Daniels Prize for "Substratum," a three-essay portfolio including "In Flint, lead contamination spurs fight for...
In its report released in late March, the task force appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder to investigate the Flint water crisis called the disaster a clear case of "environmental injustice," and a failure of state leadership. Identified as a chief culprit...
Susan Dynarski’s latest New York Times Upshot contribution explores “How to use tax credits to increase college attendance.”“Taxpayers will file for $20 billion in tax credits for college expenses they paid in 2015, but while those who get [the...
Susan Dynarski considers the effects of student loan interest rates in “What does cutting rates on student loans do?” The piece appears in Evidence Speaks, a weekly publication of the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families. Dynarski...
On April 8, a group of Ford School master’s students traveled to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to participate in the 12th annual Black Policy Conference, a student-led conference that brings together academics and practitioners to...
