Addressing slum redevelopment issues in India, building a supplier dashboard for sustainable harvests, investing in smarter water resources in Sudan, and more. Final reports from the Ford School’s 2015 Dow Sustainability Fellows (names in bold) are...
This week, Megan Tompkins-Stange is taking over Education Week’s “Rick Hess Straight Up” blog.Today’s post by Tompkins-Stange, “Silver bullets and solutionism in education philanthropy,” looks at the dramatic rise of outcome-oriented philanthropy in...
I left my house in the dark this morning. The electricity went out at 7:30, which I later learned was because I made the very American mistake of having the air conditioner and hot water heater on at the same time. My host family, a Vietnamese...
Each year, more than a dozen Ford School graduate students travel to China to study the nation’s policy environment. During their trip, they meet with a cross-section of leaders in the policy community and experience the nation’s history and...
In “Why the very poor have become poorer,” Christopher Jencks reviews $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, for the June 9 issue of The New York Review of Books. Written by Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin, $2.00 a Day (Houghton Mifflin...
Sandra Danziger and $2.00 a Day are cited in The New York Times piece, “Political rifts over Bill Clinton’s welfare law resurface as aid shrinks.” The piece, which examines the mixed legacy of welfare reform on the occasion of its pending 20th...
In “The inevitable decline of Putin’s Russia,” an article in U.S. News & World Report, Melvyn Levitsky describes the risks of escalating military responses to Vladimir Putin’s land grabs, military incursions, and aggressive rhetoric.“I just don’t...
John Ciorciari, who joined the Ford School as an assistant professor of public policy in 2009, has been promoted to associate professor of public policy with tenure.His promotion was approved at the May 19, 2016 meeting of the University of Michigan...
Shobita Parthasarathy’s research on grassroots innovation in India is featured on this week’s “The Next Idea,” a Michigan Radio series dedicated to game-changing innovations and ideas. Listen here.In “Fostering grassroots innovation: Lessons India...
On the 20th anniversary of the publication of his first op-ed on the use of classroom computers, Brian Jacob, who is engaged in several digital learning research initiatives, explores “The opportunities and challenges of digital learning.” Jacob’s...
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...
