Machine learning is increasingly used for government decision-making to predict adverse outcomes. For instance, many cities and states in the U.S. have adopted pretrial risk assessments that inform decisions about whether to release criminal...
The Education Policy Initiative (EPI) Training Program in Causal Inference in Education Policy Research (CIEPR) graduated its first full cohort of PhDs in 2021. First funded in 2015, the focus of the program is to prepare doctoral students to...
Ammara Ansari (MPP ‘19) never imagined working on youth education and wellness policy or conducting evaluations—but in a joint fellowship with The Skillman Foundation and the Council of Michigan Foundations (CMF), that is exactly what she’s doing....
What is the impact of a liberal arts education on students’ lives?
University of Michigan researchers, including Ford School faculty members Paul Courant and Kevin Stange, were recently awarded a $1.1 million grant extension to answer this...
The routes and schedules of public transit, the presence or absence of sidewalks, the availability of different transportation options, and the design of highways that have divided cities—these are examples of aspects of transportation systems that...
Ford School Dean Michael S. Barr and his collaborators Howell E. Jackson of Harvard Law School and Margaret E. Tahyar from the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, LLP, have released the third edition of their textbook, Financial Regulation: Law and...
In 2008, Bill Gates gave a speech about how his foundation viewed teacher quality—specifically, separating high-performing teachers from low-performing ones through teacher evaluation—as their most important funding priority. In 2009, the Obama...
Natasha Pilkauskas' research on "Historical Trends in Children Living in Multigenerational Households in the United States: 1870–2018" has been selected as the 2020 winner of the IPUMS Research Award.
Pilkauskas and her co-authors used decennial...
A recent New York Times article cites Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin’s 2015 award-winning book, $2.00 a Day as a marker that led to the passage of important elements of the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” which includes temporary measures to...
“Our findings illuminate the many different ways in which academic research affects the national economy and society as a whole,” said Jason Owen-Smith. “U-M is an excellent illustration of the multifaceted impact research investments can have,...
Robert Hampshire, associate professor at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, whose research and policy engagement focuses on understanding the societal, climate and equity implications of autonomous and connected...
New Ford School sociologist Celeste Watkins-Hayes works at the intersection of inequality, public policy, and institutions, with a special focus on urban poverty and race, class, and gender studies. Her most recent book Remaking a Life: How Women...
"The key problem is in default and repayment problems," said Dynarski. "In terms of a macro-level, is this a big drag on the economy? I don't think so. In terms of a micro-level, are there people who's lives are ruined by fairly small amounts of...
“We are creating inequality 20 years down the line that is even greater than we have today,” said Stevenson. “This is how inequality begets inequality.”
Read the full New York Times article...
"When all is said and done, to change about 150,000 votes [in Michigan] is a really big task and it's extremely unlikely that that will happen," said Jonathan Hanson.
Read the full WXYZ article about next steps in the 2020 election...
"At the current pace of improvement, the job market would not return to its pre-pandemic level until February 2022," said Stevenson.
Read the full CNN Business article...
"In the end, it depends on how close the presidential race is. If Biden runs really strong in Michigan, Peters is likely to have wind behind his sails as well," Hanson said. "I expect James to run a few percentage points stronger than Trump. The...
“Michigan is clearly one of the battleground states,” said Hanson.
“The vote totals we see Tuesday night are not going to be indicative of the overall totals," he said. "Probably, they’ll lead more toward Trump on Tuesday because more Republicans...
“Although Biden’s lead over Trump is similar to Clinton’s lead at this same point, Biden’s lead has been far steadier” said Shipan. “Biden’s lead has been consistently large. Second, pollsters learn from their mistakes. In 2016, they...
"The presidential race is really dominating what's going to happen in this senate race in Michigan. The coattail effect will be very strong," said Hanson. "If Trump was to have a really strong performance in Michigan, I think that could bring James...
Macomb is "a transition county that’s very middle class and very blue collar. In some ways it’s a snapshot of Michigan overall, but also in a lot of ways it ...looks similar to a lot of the rest of the country. If the 2018 election is any indicator...
"If the outcome is not going to be known on election night, play-by-play coverage on the model of past elections is unnecessary and, in fact, dangerously uninformative. All media should adopt the strict standard that no state winner should be...
Justin Wolfers' April 4, 2017 article for The New York Times' "The Upshot," "How Gorsuch could pull the eight other justices rightward," examines recently published research on the effects of peer-judge ideology on the U.S. Supreme Court.According...
A paper by Brian Jacob and Jesse Rothstein (U-C Berkeley), "The Measurement of Student Ability in Modern Assessment Systems," was published in the Summer 2016 edition of the American Economic Association's Journal of Economic Perspectives. The piece...
Elisabeth Gerber on the dangers of extrinsic motivation
Organizations around the world hope to prove that natural resource conservation and economic development can go hand in hand—that we can preserve our forests, fish, and waterways while...
Brian Jacob was called to testify last week as a witness for the prosecution in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating trial, in which prosecutors allege a dozen educators engaged in a “widespread, cleverly disguised” conspiracy to improve their...
Brian A. Jacob's work was cited in an Inside Higher Ed article about shifting generational views of academic dishonesty. In the wake of a hotly debated cheating scandal at the University of Central Florida, many researchers are weighing-in on the...
Join us for a virtual workshop on conducting policy and action research within our own communities. Dr. Wilson will use examples from LGBTQ policy research as a jumping off point to explore strategies for navigating the power, privilege and opportunity differentials involved when researchers hope to contribute to policy solutions within their own communities.
Learn about opportunities to practice social science research and quantitative analysis skills in and out of the classroom and how they provide a toolbox of research, analytical, and management skills that are highly transferable across sectors and issue areas.
The Ford School is recognized again as one of America’s top graduate programs in public affairs, ranked 4th in the U.S. according to the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings. April, 2023.
