President Obama announced in August that the Department of Education would be creating the Postsecondary Institution Rating System (PIRS), a new rating system for colleges. The Department of Education issued a request for ideas on how to design and implement the PIRS. This series of blogs posts is adapted from ...
According to existing research, giving mothers paid time off could lead to both improved health outcomes and overall costs savings from reduced employee turnover and re-training costs. AIR's Alex Holod describes the benefits of family leave for both parent and child, why some parents aren’t taking full advantage of available ...
Attaining some kind of college degree is the surest way to improve one’s earnings in the United States. But many college students earn credentials with little labor market value or don’t attain any credential at all. Many—especially in our community colleges—could get into better colleges than they end up attending. ...
The Obama administration took a step toward the President’s planned college ratings system on December 19, releasing a 24-page “Framework” for college ratings. In this blog post, Tom Weko asks, "Are the Department of Education's college ratings likely to become an enduring feature of the nation’s higher education landscape?" ...
Do median wages paid to bachelor’s graduates demonstrate gender differences after “controlling” for choice across high and low paying programs of study? Data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that merges student level data with Unemployment Insurance wage data can provide an initial answer to this question. In this ...
This spotlight takes a look at the history of Title I, how the program has changed over time, and how it affects children, schools, families and education policy. Experts weigh in on the program's past and future in interviews, briefs, and blogs.
Ashu Handa is an economist whose work centers on global poverty, health, and human development in sub-Saharan Africa. At AIR, he works to expand Equity Initiative work internationally and supports AIR’s global poverty research and policy efforts. He has been a professor at the University of North Carolina for 20 ...
The Supreme Court recently held that UT Austin’s race-conscious admissions plan is lawful under the Equal Protection Clause. In this blog post, Ben Backes discusses what this does (and does not) mean.
The Center for Coordinated Assistance to States, or CCAS at AIR held its annual State Relations and Assistance Division (SRAD), National Training Conference on November 8–10, 2021. The conference supports SRAD, part of the OJJDP, which helps states and territories prevent and treat delinquency and improve their juvenile justice systems. ...
In his final State of the Union address, President Obama said, “We live in a time of extraordinary change… and whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.” In this blog post, AIR’s Peter Cookson says the key to dealing with this change is ...