Policies calling for holding children back a grade in elementary school to improve their reading skills are widespread—if unpopular—across the United States. However, the benefits to students appear to come from the support services put in place...
President Trump’s long-anticipated travel ban takes effect today, marking a significant shift in U.S. immigration policy. University of Michigan expert Jonathan Hanson, a lecturer in public policy at the Ford School, said the implications of this...
The Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Junior Summer Institute (JSI) welcomes 24 undergraduate students from 15 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Chosen from a highly competitive pool of applicants, the students will spend seven weeks taking...
The Ford School is deeply saddened to announce the passing of Ambassador Melvyn ‘Mel’ Levitsky, esteemed professor of international policy and practice. He passed away on May 17, 2025 at the age of...
A new review from Dean Yang published in Science reveals evidence that high-skilled migration opportunities can also lead to “brain gain,” increasing, rather than decreasing, a country’s overall stock of educated...
Artificial intelligence is often debated in terms of being a cure-all or chaos agent, as if independent of its human creators. Neither is the case, nor should we forget who makes it and why, and how it should serve humanity. Shobita Parthasarathy...
As the federal government appears poised to pull back on collecting and disseminating educational data, it’s increasingly critical that information collected and maintained by states and local districts is available to inform policy, according to a...
As popularity for career and technical education (CTE) programs increases, education economist Brian Jacob and YPL Project Manager Lynn Meissner make a case for robust data collection and research to understand their long-term impact on students....
Ford School economics professor Justin Wolfers is one of the most prolific “public” scholars at the school. His analyses about current economic events regularly appear on the pages of The New York Times (among others), on the screens at Bloomberg...
The U.S. House narrowly passed a bill early Thursday that would slash taxes and cut Medicaid, a health care program that provides comprehensive health care services to low income adults and children. It now heads to the Senate.While major changes...
More Michigan communities are adopting policies to improve police-community relations, and local officials see increased trust among residents for law enforcement officers where certain practices were in place.The latest Michigan Public Policy...
As the number of artificial intelligence (AI)-related measures introduced in U.S. state and territorial legislatures continues to grow, policymakers, advocates and consumers can seize the moment to assure that the technology is promoting fair...
Free webinar June 4 will demo the Excel to iXBRL Conversion toolA free, open-source tool designed by the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy is now available to help local governments make financial data more accessible. Developed...
The Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan will establish the Martha Darling and Gilbert Omenn Research Fund for Early Childhood Education with a generous $500,000 commitment from Martha A. Darling and Gilbert S. Omenn....
Kirti Jayakumar, from the India-based Gender Security Project, interviewed Shobita Parthasarathy about her journey into science policy, her research in India, using a social justice perspective to advance technology, and the role of law and policy....
On May 8, about 25 community members gathered at the downtown Ann Arbor District Library to hear firsthand how guaranteed income is supporting local entrepreneurs and gig workers. The event spotlighted Guaranteed Income to Grow – Ann Arbor (GIG A2),...
When Congress passed the Financial Data and Transparency Act (FDTA) in 2022, it required all municipalities in the U.S. to modernize and digitize their financial reports. This is a heavy lift for small towns and school districts, most of which still...
When Emma Renzi Wise (BA ’19) got hooked on learning about environmental policy at the Ford School, she never imagined working for the New York City Department of Sanitation. But nearly six years after leaving Ann Arbor, Wise is the community...
Moynihan: "State capacity” is hard to define and measure, and is perhaps seen as boring, but capacity is the hidden glue that holds public policy together, or, when debased, causes public policy to fall apart. If you care about the quality of...
The economics of tariffs is surprisingly simple: they are a tax, which raises the price that buyers pay and that competing sellers inside the country can...
Have you ever disassembled a broken coffee maker or a sink, convinced you could fix it, only to end up with a jumble of parts? As a child, Terry Nguyen’s (BA ’25) curiosity about how things worked led to a broken fan, a pile of parts, and no idea...
In an effort to spark democratic engagement on college campuses, the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy and the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy co-hosted the Big Ten Democracy Summit in February. More than 150...
Dean Watkins-Hayes, at the Congressional Breakfast in DC, with Michigan in Washington undergraduates Ajay Morelli, Malinda Brunk, Rachel Ellisen, and Isaac Davis, and Riecker Fellow Hope Wang (MPP...
Professor Elisabeth Gerber is the inaugural faculty director of the Ford School’s Online Master of Public Affairs (MPA) program, which will launch in January 2026. Read what she has to say about the new...
This spring, Ford School economist Joshua Hausman delivered a talk on how the markets for cars and houses influenced the United States macroeconomy in the 1920s and 1930s. The talk was this year’s Bernie Saffran Lecture, in honor of longtime...
