The Ford School is proud of its record of welcoming policymakers-in-residence. This past year, Ford School professor Kevin Stange played a different role – academic-in-residence. He had a one-year assignment working in the U.S. Department of...
The Biden Administration is preparing a new set of student loan debt-relief measures in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of its previous, ambitious plan, which would have eliminated between $10,000 and $20,000 per student. A number of...
Over 1.3 million Michiganders hold around $50 billion in student loan debt, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Education. The Biden administration's plan to forgive $10,000 of loan debt, and up to $20,000 for those students who...
Susan Dynarski will testify in front of the United States Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee (HELP) hearing “Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Financial Aid Simplification and Transparency.” The hearing will be livestreamed...
In a May 6 “Economic View” column for The New York Times, "The wrong way to fix student debt," Susan Dynarski describes three recent regulatory changes that are “making student loans riskier, more expensive and more burdensome for borrowers.”The...
A team of four researchers, including Susan Dynarski, published a working paper on income-contingent loan (ICL) systems this month for the Centre for Global Higher Education: “Getting student financing right in the US: Lessons from Australia and...
In “The RNC wants to make student loans competitive again. They never were,” Susan Dynarski provides detailed context on one plank of the newly released Republican platform, which pushes to get the federal government out of the student loan...
Roughly 100 guests—including policymakers, practitioners, and members of the press—attended “Restructuring student loans: Lessons from abroad,” a conference organized by Susan Dynarski, co-founder and co-director of the Ford School’s Education...
Susan Dynarski considers the effects of student loan interest rates in “What does cutting rates on student loans do?” The piece appears in Evidence Speaks, a weekly publication of the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families. Dynarski...
Professor Susan Dynarski has been named a recipient of the "Public Service Matters" Spotlight Award by the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) for her ongoing work on college affordability and student debt....
The United States government has a portfolio of roughly $1 trillion in student loans, many of which appear to be troubled writes Susan Dynarski in the business section of the Sunday New York Times. Dynarski’s column, “We’re frighteningly in the dark...
Vast inequalities currently exist in the U.S. education system – there is little debate among experts on this issue. And while it’s the ambitious system-level reform proposals that garner widespread attention, several seemingly simple...
Susan Dynarski spoke with Marketplace Morning Report for a November 13 story discussing new statistics on student loan debt released by The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS).
The cost of getting a bachelor’s degree remains on the rise,...
“The Obama administration seems intent on putting [college] ratings in place in short order,” writes Dynarski in “Why Federal College Ratings Won’t Rein In Tuition,” published in the Sunday, September 21 edition of The New York Times. “Along with...
Student loan interest rates have risen from 3.86 to 4.66 percent this fall, and critics are arguing that the government should lower rates again or risk lower college attendance and more defaults on student debt. According to Susan Dynarski, though,...
Causal Inference in Education Research Seminar (CIERS)
Education Policy Initiative is pleased to host a free and public conference in Washington, DC on student debt policies with international and US-based student loan experts.
The Education Policy Initiative and the School of Education welcome Rohit Chopra, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and Susan Dynarski, professor of education, public policy, and economics at the University of Michigan, to discuss the repercussions of the $1.3 trillion dollar student loan deficit on higher education and economic inequality.
The opening plenary session will take place on Thursday, October 24 and feature a Policy Talks @ the Ford School lecture with Roberto Rodríguez, special assistant to the president for education policy. Click here to read more about the plenary session with Roberto Rodríguez. About the conference: This topic has received extensive popular media coverage, but there has been a paucity of rigorous research, and what little there is has been isolated. The goal of the conference is twofold.
Free and open to the public Reception to follow Join the conversation on Twitter: #policytalks About the speaker: Roberto J. Rodríguez serves in the White House Domestic Policy Council as Special Assistant to the President for Education. Previously, Rodríguez was Chief Education Counsel to United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
Susan Dynarski, Nicholas Barr, Bruce Chapman, Lorraine Dearden
The US student loan system is currently in crisis. US graduates owe $1.3 trillion in student loans; seven million borrowers are in default and even more are in arrears. The impact on borrowers is catastrophic. We argue that this is mainly due to the...
National efforts to promote college enrollment are increasingly delivered through tax-based assistance, including tax credits and deductions for tuition and fees, tax-advantaged college savings plans, and student loan interest deductions. This paper...
In this paper, I provide an economic perspective on policy issues related to student debt in the United States. I lay out the economic rationale for government provision of student loans and summarize time trends in student borrowing. I describe the...
Borrowing for college has risen for decades, and today 7 million of these student loans are in default. Yet the cost of borrowing is far lower than the lifetime payoff to college, which is estimated to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Moreover,...
In the nearly fifty years since the adoption of the Higher Education Act of 1965, financial aid programs have grown in scale, expanded in scope, and multiplied in form. As a result, financial aid has become the norm among college enrollees. Aid now...
Rohit Chopra and Susan Dynarski discuss the repercussions of the $1.3 trillion dollar student loan deficit on higher education and economic inequality. January 2016.
Roberto Rodriguez serves on the White House Domestic Policy Council as Special Assistant to the President for Education. In his talk, he discusses student loan and higher education reforms. October, 2013.
