How does one square the claim that "new grad loan limits aren't cutting access" with this research? www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/FRBP...

This is a good, concise accounting from @urbaninstitute.bsky.social of the issues with earnings tests for postsecondary degrees E.g., failing to account for differences in employer benefits, student characteristics, non-financial benefits, and societal benefits www.urban.org/urban-wire/e...

A single missing elderly woman, while sad, should not be the entire A block on every news program for two weeks

Science is winning www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Lots of news in the world, so I'm grateful to see this IHEP post about how Congress quietly repudiated the damage the president want to do to education research in the new appropriations package. www.ihep.org/lawmakers-ma...

New study shows after SCOTUS struck down affirmative action the number of underrepresented minority (URM) students enrolling in Ivy Plus colleges decreased by ~450 The number of low-income non-URM students increased by ~120, suggesting these colleges placed more weight on income in absence of race

The US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government every year from 1994 to 2023. The Cato study provides the first-ever 30-year analysis of the fiscal effects of immigration on government budgets. https://ow.ly/jy8a50Y8kM3

State funding for public higher ed went up by approximately 0.7% in FY26, the fourteenth consecutive increase but below the rate of inflation this time. Eight states cut funding by at least five percent, setting off warnings going forward. shef.sheeo.org/wp-content/u...

Except the professional degree designation *is* about value--just in a ham-handed way Policymakers allowed students in professional programs to go into more debt because those programs are perceived to generally be more valuable

It's relatively easy to communicate to the public "X is broken." It's harder to communicate "X is broken in this particular way, and here's how to fix it." Only communicating the former can pave the way for people to implement reforms that might have nothing to do with the way X is broken

I have recently come to terms with the fact my job is now ~40% bugging people until they do the things I need them to do

New RCT findings from MDRC on the long-term effects of NYC's Small Schools of Choice--high schools with 100 students/grade that emphasize personalized student-teacher relationships: -10pp increase in college enrollment after HS (53% vs 43%) -3pp increase in bachelor degree attainment (15% vs 12%)

The Iowa Legislature is considering a bill to require its universities to pay 25% of students' defaulted loans Risk-sharing is not a new idea, but enacting it at the state level creates an odd dynamic of effectively sending state dollars to the federal gov't iowacapitaldispatch.com/briefs/state...

Sounds like staffing cuts at ED are preventing it from fulfilling its legal obligations

Glad to see many people recommended better peer review quality control for IES proposals I could tell you some real horror stories...

Curious about what people said in response to the RFI about "re-imagining" the Institute of Education Sciences (IES)? I put the public comments in one file (763 pages) and used AI to analyze the themes and areas of agreement and disagreement (5 pages) by audience ⬇️: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

As states introduce their own student loan programs to fill the federal gap, it's going to be more important than ever to provide borrowers with support as they navigate the complex repayment landscape www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

From May to December, ED cut the IDR application backlog in half--from 1.5 million to 750k But the storm on the horizon is there are 7 million borrowers who will need to be moved to new plans once SAVE is officially terminated www.nasfaa.org/news-item/38...

Congressional appropriations committees are proposing $790 million of annual funding for IES--triple what the president requested and in line with the agency's historical funding level www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

The Trump administration is demanding colleges hand over their admissions data to enforce the ban on affirmative action. Due date: March 18. Just a few problems that colleges are dealing with as they dig through the numbers and try to comply. (1/10) 🧵

If you added the Institute of Education Sciences you'd need a bigger range on the y-axis 😭

New RCT findings from MDRC on the impact of raising salaries for ECE teachers: Teachers were less likely to work 2+ jobs, experience food insecurity, and have unpaid bills Teachers reported more job satisfaction Mixed evidence there was greater teacher retention www.mdrc.org/work/publica...

Maybe the most ridiculous part of DHS's portrayal is that a dad would try to manage six children at a protest. I can barely manage my two at a playground!

Total college enrollment 📈 Publics 📈 Privates 📉 International students 📉 Computer Science students 📉 nscresearchcenter.org/enrollment-i...

Imagine my absolute shock to hear someone from this administration describe the Institute of Education Sciences as "the gem in the crown of the Dept of Ed." 🤯

There’s a paradox around remote work. Jamie Dimon says it will kill productivity, while startups are hiring for remote roles. Who is right? With Abhinav Gupta and Elena Simintzi we try to resolve this dispute Paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Substack: arpitrage.substack.com/p/remote-wor...

I think there's space for student debt relief to fit into the pro-family / birthrate conversation (beyond the fact that IDR calculations take family size into account) E.g., putting student loans in deferment for an amount of time after childbirth or partial forgiveness per child

Lots of good higher education finance research in this new volume www.nber.org/books-and-ch...

SCOTUS said researchers must challenge grant cancellations in the Court of Federal Claims But some attorneys say that court does not have the authority to restore the full value of the grants--only out-of-pocket termination costs--and relief may take years www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

Legislators in Connecticut are looking to create a new student loan program for graduate education to fill the gap created by OBBBA www.insidehighered.com/news/student...

This can only be called a cost-benefit analysis if you think the value of a human life is $0

Jay Greene, the NACIQI chair, is now employed by the organization run by Robert Eitel, another NACIQI member Might this make the chair place a little more weight on the priorities of his now-boss?

I'm on board with earnings tests in theory, but I do worry that we're rushing to "ROI-ify" everything before the data and methodology are ready for prime time E.g., accounting for employer benefits, hours worked, demographic composition across programs, etc. www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Science is winning

IES is the federal agency with the second largest reduction in staff this year, narrowly behind USAID

if you want a long read that involves udders, a hot air balloon, and some extremely dubious data on egg prices, the story I’ve been working on for the last few months where I tried to single-handedly take on every government function myself is now online! www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

In 2025, MDRC posted nearly 100 reports, briefs, practitioner guides, and other publications — offering research results, profiles of innovative programs, and evidence-backed advice for policymakers and practitioners. Here are 10 of the most popular. www.mdrc.org/work/publica...

Prospective grad students with low credit scores and no one to cosign a loan for them will be locked out of a quarter of grad programs in the country Do we think this will be good or bad for social mobility? www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Federal support for scientific research is popular I'm hopeful we will ultimately look back on 2025 as a brief aberration in the federal approach to scientific research spurred by a small group of people largely unaccountable to the public

There's a sentiment in public policy circles of opposition to incorporating statistically-savvy techniques into policy (e.g., using regression-adjusted estimates) that I find lacking ambition and somewhat elitist ("oh, this sounds good to us smarty-pants but the common rubes will never go for it")

Damn, from @byjoshmoody.bsky.social: "With around 300 reported job cuts last month, the higher education sector shed at least 9,000 positions across 2025, a year marked by federal policy uncertainty and rising costs." www.insidehighered.com/news/busines...

The Biden administration simplified the process for getting student loans discharged in bankruptcy Following the changes, 87% of borrowers who sought such discharges got them, up from 61% in 2017 www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/b...

We did it. My wife and I have survived an 18-day stretch (12/19 - 1/5) with only one day of child care for our three- and one-year-olds. (Not to mention the temperature was below freezing for almost that entire 18-day stretch)

Friendly reminder: the calendar should be 13 months of 28 days with New Year's Day being a bonus standalone day

Here are some key takeaways from the negotiated rulemaking dataset that was released yesterday. --Only 3.5% of programs will likely fail the earnings metric, but it's disproportionately for-profits and certificates. --Nearly 30% of grad/professional programs are over the new annual lending limits.

I'll write a blog post on this at some point over the next few days, but a much larger share of programs at for-profit colleges are estimated to fail the new federal earnings test using newly released data. The level of program also matters, with undergraduate certificates being the main culprit.

This !@#$% year in review: the wrecking ball that was February 2025 brought the abrupt end to many Institute of Education Sciences contracts for data collection, evaluation and research. www.brookings.edu/articles/cut... 🧵

Please tell the 18-year-olds in your life to do the opposite of what Gladwell recommends here fortune.com/2025/12/27/m...

"Even after accounting for the upfront costs and delayed benefits, enrolling marginal applicants to public universities generates substantial net returns for society, the marginal students themselves, and the government budget." Public Universities FTW!

I anticipate this becoming a campaign issue for Democrats in 2026, fitting into the larger "affordability" issue