Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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CJ Libassi @clibassi.bsky.social · 1d

🧵 New working paper! In joint work w/ @jscottclayton.bsky.social, Veronica Minaya, & Joshua Thomas, we use admin data from a large public univ system to examine earnings gaps for high- vs low-SES college grads 5 years out & the role of first jobs in explaining the gaps. 1/ www.nber.org/papers/w34366

Who Rides Out the Storm? The Immediate Post-College Transition and its Role in Socioeconomic Earnings Gaps

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

www.nber.org

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Zach Schermele @zachschermele.bsky.social · 2d

NEW: These are all the Education Dept. offices that staffers and managers say have been impacted by layoffs since Friday, according to the union for the agency’s employees.

They include workers that supported HBCUs, tribal colleges, charter schools, civil rights reviews, special ed & more.

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Annenberg Institute @annenberginstitute.bsky.social · 19d

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: A new study by @eburland.bsky.social and colleagues shows how administrative burdens and fractured responsibilities limit take-up of Michigan’s Tuition Incentive Program.

📄 Full paper here: edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1283

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Postsecondary Education & Economics Research Center @peerresearch.bsky.social · 7d

NEW from @PEERResearch.bsky.social: We estimated how #highered programs measure up against the accountability standard in the reconciliation law. Overall, few programs fall short, but low-earning programs are concentrated in some schools, fields. www.american.edu/spa/peer/one...

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Robert Kelchen @robertkelchen.com · 6d

As a small-town Midwesterner with a PhD in education policy, I know the world of competitive high schools exist...but I still can't process it. Growing up, the options were the local public high school or a regional Catholic school. I went to the public school and turned out okay-ish.

These Parents Are Willing to Pay Up to $15,000 to Get Their Kids Into High School

Getting into high school—private and public—is more competitive than ever. Parents are paying up.

www.wsj.com

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AEFP @aefpweb.bsky.social · 9d

Have you submitted your proposal for #AEFP2026 yet? The deadline is TOMORROW - Monday, October 6th! Learn more here: aefpweb.org/callforp...

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Annaliese Paulson @annaliesep.bsky.social · 12d

Columbia caved first, paid $221 million, and then didn't even get a pat on the head that it was a "good actor"! I imagine every one of these institutions will be treated just as well.

Robert Kelchen @robertkelchen.com · 13d

The government is officially shut down, but the Trump administration is trying to get nine selective colleges to agree to major controls on their operations in order to get a leg up on federal funding.

www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

Letters on Wednesday were going out to solicit agreement and feedback from Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia, according to an administration official.

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Christina Weiland @weilanch.bsky.social · 13d

Welcome @edpolicyford.bsky.social to Bluesky!! Give a follow for research and happenings from our fantastic UMich faculty and students.

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Taylor Odle @taylorodle.bsky.social · 13d

🍎🦡 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.

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Robert Kelchen @robertkelchen.com · 13d

After increasing spending to $134,000 per student (!!!) and facing retention problems, the New College of Florida is apparently having discussions about privatization or closure after DeSantis leaves office.

Spending Soars, Rankings Fall at New College of Florida

Student outcomes and rankings are slipping at the liberal arts college while spending is up. Critics believe the college is at risk of implosion, and some are calling for privatization.

www.insidehighered.com

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Steve B. Holt @stevebholt.bsky.social · 14d

Hi everyone. Some exciting news. We are hiring an Assistant Professor in Public Policy here at Rockefeller College. We are pretty flexible on topic areas. We have a great team here and Albany is a great place to live. #econsky #academicsky

Posting: albany.interviewexchange.com/jobofferdeta...

albany.interviewexchange.com

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Annaliese Paulson @annaliesep.bsky.social · 15d

Who could have seen this coming?

A screenshot showing that the Association for Education Finance and Policy conference deadline was extended to October 6th.

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Ben Schmidt @bschmidt.bsky.social · 16d

Despite the gutting of the National Center for Educational Statistics, the dept of Ed *did* manage to release 2024 college major counts in the usual format, so I can run it through the same code I do every year. First off, the change since peak of the largest fields -- another year of drops.

A line chart captioned "The big humanities majors were mostly still falling in 2024", showing drops since 2008 for most humanities fields between 10% (Study of the Arts) to 68% (religion) with history, english, and foreign languages all clustered around 50-55%

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Ana-Maria Dimand @anadimand.bsky.social · 19d

The School of Public Affairs at American University seeks a full-time Research Associate (Research Assistant Professor rank). The position will support the Postsecondary Education & Economics Research (PEER) Center through rigorous and timely policy research and analysis.

Research Associate - PEER Center - HigherEdJobs

Jobs in higher education. Faculty and administrative positions at colleges and universities. Updated daily. Free to job seekers.

www.higheredjobs.com

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 21d

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."

me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review

Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

www.bostonreview.net

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Taylor Odle @taylorodle.bsky.social · 22d

🚨 Come join us in Ed Policy at @uwmadison.bsky.social! We're hiring an Asst/Assoc Prof studying the intersection of education and the environment. jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...

Assistant or Associate Professor in Educational Policy Studies - Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Regula...

jobs.wisc.edu

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Annaliese Paulson @annaliesep.bsky.social · 22d

Heartwarming to know UM and MSU still agree on some policies

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Joachim Baumann @joachimbaumann.bsky.social · Sep 12

🚨 New paper alert 🚨 Using LLMs as data annotators, you can produce any scientific result you want. We call this **LLM Hacking**.

Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.08825

$We present our new preprint titled "Large Language Model Hacking: Quantifying the Hidden Risks of Using LLMs for Text Annotation". We quantify LLM hacking risk through systematic replication of 37 diverse computational social science annotation tasks. For these tasks, we use a combined set of 2,361 realistic hypotheses that researchers might test using these annotations. Then, we collect 13 million LLM annotations across plausible LLM configurations. These annotations feed into 1.4 million regressions testing the hypotheses. For a hypothesis with no true effect (ground truth $p > 0.05$), different LLM configurations yield conflicting conclusions. Checkmarks indicate correct statistical conclusions matching ground truth; crosses indicate LLM hacking -- incorrect conclusions due to annotation errors. Across all experiments, LLM hacking occurs in 31-50\% of cases even with highly capable models. Since minor configuration changes can flip scientific conclusions, from correct to incorrect, LLM hacking can be exploited to present anything as statistically significant.$

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Annenberg Institute @annenberginstitute.bsky.social · Sep 11

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: Do RCTs in higher ed risk contamination?

From a large in-person college course intervention, @catherinematah.bsky.social, @katharinemeyer.bsky.social & @linzpage.bsky.social show when individual-level randomization is preferred

📄 Full paper here: edworkingpapers.com/ai24-1083

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AEFP @aefpweb.bsky.social · Sep 10

Join the Doctoral Student Community Group tomorrow at 2 PM ET for a panel discussion on navigating the academic job market. Gain valuable insights and practical strategies from experienced panelists. Register here: upenn.zoom.us/meetin...

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Sarah W. Lenhoff @sarahlenhoff.bsky.social · Sep 9

📢 Job Posting! 📢 We are hiring TWO postdocs at Detroit PEER at Wayne State (detroitpeer.org)! We are looking for one quant/mixed methods expert and one qual/mixed expert to work with me & @jeremylsinger.bsky.social on attendance research. Apply by Oct. 10, but flexible on start date! Please share!

Detroit PEER Postdoc Job Description 2025.pdf

drive.google.com

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Riley Acton @riacton.bsky.social · Sep 8

🚨 New working paper alert! 🚨 #econsky

Emily Cook, Paola Ugalde, and I are thrilled to share "Political Views and College Choices in a Polarized America" — now out with both @iza.org and @annenberginstitute.bsky.social EdWorkingPapers

www.iza.org/publications...

edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1280

Political Views and College Choices in a Polarized America

Riley Acton
Miami University & IZA

Emily Cook
Texas A&M University & CESifo

Paola Ugalde A.
Louisiana State University

We examine the role of students’ political views in shaping college enrollment decisions in the United States. We hypothesize that students derive utility from attending institutions aligned with their political identities, which
could reinforce demographic and regional disparities in educational attainment and reduce ideological diversity on campuses. Using four decades of survey data on college freshmen, we document increasing political
polarization in colleges' student bodies, which is not fully explained by sorting along demographic, socioeconomic, or academic lines. To further explore these patterns, we conduct a series of survey-based choice experiments that quantify the value students place on political alignment relative to factors such as cost and proximity. We find that both liberal and conservative students prefer institutions with more like-minded peers and, especially, with fewer students from the opposite side of the political spectrum. The median student is willing to pay up to $2,617 (12.5%) more to attend a college where the share of students with opposing political views is 10 percentage points lower, suggesting that political identity plays a meaningful role in the college choice process.

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Taylor Odle @taylorodle.bsky.social · Sep 8

🏆 Nominate a student (or yourself) for the @aeraedresearch.bsky.social @aeradivjgradnet.bsky.social Dissertation Award! Deadline is Nov 1.

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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · Sep 5

New The Effect materials today: introductions to basic coding and data manipulation in R, Stata, and Python. Get the wheels turning on using these languages with data with these intro pages and exercises:
nickchk.com/Coding%20and...
nickchk.com/Coding%20and...
nickchk.com/Coding%20and...

Introduction to Working with Data: R Version

nickchk.com

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Robert Kelchen @robertkelchen.com · Sep 3

The National Center for Education Statistics is hiring two researchers to work on NAEP, the first green shoots after DOGE came through back in February. They limit to 150 applications, so move fast if interested.

www.usajobs.gov/job/844948000

www.usajobs.gov/job/844947600

Education Research Analyst GS-1730-14 (MP)

<p>There are two positions located in the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Science in Washinton, DC. The Assessment Development Expert and the Assessment Administration Expert is respon...

www.usajobs.gov

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