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...
CLOSUP program manager Tom Ivacko’s “What is lost when a state takes over a city,” was published on April 13 by Governing.com. The piece, which ran in "Voices of the Governing Institute," describes Michigan’s restrictive local government finance...
An independent panel convened by Gov. Rick Snyder in the wake of the Flint water crisis concluded that government disregard for low-income residents and people of color contributed to the delay in action, according to a recent New York Times...
Susan Dynarski’s economic view, “Why talented black and Hispanic students can go undiscovered,” was published in this Sunday's New York Times. “Public schools are increasingly filled with black and Hispanic students, but the children identified as...
Catherine Hausman's analysis of the economic impacts that result from a nuclear power plant closure was published in the latest edition of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.
For "Market Impacts of a Nuclear Power Plant...
On April 4th, The Conversation U.S. published Shobita Parthasarathy’s article entitled “CRISPR dispute raises bigger patent issues we’re not talking about.” In the article, Parthasarathy argues that the patent dispute over CRISPR, a potentially...
On Thursday, March 31, the U-M student group, OUTbreak, and the Ford School student org, Out in Public, organized a panel discussing health care access issues within the transgender community.According to The Michigan Daily article, "Panel discusses...
Susan Dynarski's proposal to eliminate the FAFSA form was among the reforms championed by an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) writer and research assistant in an article published Tuesday, April 5.In "Fix student aid and FAFSA to help more...
In a recent Atlantic article, “The End of Welfare as We Know It,” author Alana Semuels explores the state of the welfare system today, focusing in on Arkansas in the years following President Bill Clinton’s 1996 reforms.
Semuels argues that the...
