🍎🦡 I'm recruiting a PhD student in Ed Policy (fall '26) at @uwmadison.bsky.social! Come work with me on college access, admissions, & fin aid in our top-ranked, fully-funded program. I’m especially excited for this student to immediately join our direct admissions RCT team.

Good morning, Badgers. Welcome to the Fall 2025 semester.

We wish you a successful start to your academic year.

Let’s begin.

An @afm-union.bsky.social and @sagaftra.org gal.

An NFLPA guy.

We love a union love story. Congrats Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce!

This piece pulls together a lot of recent examples of board-driven actions in higher ed, and rightfully points out that when boards become politicized, they are then subject to those politics at all levels of government: apnews.com/article/harv...

The job market for PhDs may be terrible, but the spectrum internet person that just helped me transfer my internet ended the call by telling me I'm gonna do great things with my degree, so there's that.

In our 2024 U.S. Post-Election Reflection via
@apsa.bsky.social, Rebecca Jacobsen and I preview some of our ongoing research on how partisanship and nationalization influence on-cycle local school board elections.

Morning! I did a lil analysis and turns out that, when ED employees are illegally fired and contracts are canceled, ED is unable to fulfill its congressional mandate to publish national statistics on the condition of education.

Why does that matter? Well...

www.brookings.edu/articles/the...

This piece picks up on a lot of important threads of board dynamics, one of which is that for publics, while there isn't the same conspicuousness as with Harvard/Columbia, the same politics are playing out, just more quietly and with less opportunity to rally against

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/u...

Governing boards are at the center of every higher ed story these days. What do we know about board governance? What does board composition look like nationwide, and how is it shaped by partisan appointments? My new working paper introduces new data to these questions:
edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1212

You might as well just hold on to your convictions, since abandoning them all is clearly not a viable strategy against eroding higher ed governance

The Upjohn Institute is looking for a research analyst to support our research on employment issues. Please share with your networks. #econsky #hiring
www.upjohn.org/employment-o...

Weather is getting nice, what if 10 million people went outside at the same time

Board composition, transparency, and accountability to stakeholders matters to the future of higher ed. Inclusive boards of trustees have the intellectual dexterity and structural muscle to make insightful, valued-based decisions that serve missions in harmony with the needs of the stakeholders.

Playing this as my hype music before my dissertation proposal defense today

Thanks, Dominique!

With all of the targeting of higher ed, it's critical that we have a good understanding of who governs our institutions - I wrote this piece for Brookings to summarize what we know. I also show some new data on the politics and representativeness of public boards.

www.brookings.edu/articles/und...

My dad's sign for the #handsoff rally in my hometown of Kalamazoo where apparently a few thousand turned out!

Wisconsin is critical for any presidential candidate, and Wisconsin LOVES when a sharp, no-nonsense, hometown woman on the ballot. Just saying.

Calling results from November "overwhelming" means we need a new word to describe this massive 10 point win by Crawford. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Throwback

What comes next for higher ed? @katharinemeyer.bsky.social and I wrote this piece on pandemic-era funding streams and the window they give into what turning decision-making to the states might mean. Plus more on district implications here too: www.brookings.edu/articles/wha...

Thoughts on turning @aefpweb.bsky.social this year into, oh I don't know, one giant protest?