This feature is part of an ongoing RSF blog series, Work in Progress, which highlights some of the research of our current class of Visiting Scholars.

During her time in residence at the Foundation, Elizabeth Shermer (Loyola) has worked on a book that examines the origins of the contemporary crisis in public higher education. She argues that contrary to popular belief, state universities have always been subject to market forces. Shermer finds that there was never enough government funding to create a geographically-uniform system of mass higher education, and that as a result, public universities have long been influenced by private sector interests.

In a new interview with the Foundation, Shermer discussed the complex history of the rise of public education in the U.S. and recommended policies for expanding access to higher education for low-income students.

Q. Your current research challenges the popular myth of a "golden era" of public higher education by demonstrating how, from the very beginning, state schools experienced a number of funding problems and relied on different public-private partnerships to grow. Can you briefly flesh out the history of one state school to illustrate how public higher education's growth always required ties to a variety of different businesses and institutions?

The Russell Sage Foundation has partnered with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on an initiative that explores the social, economic and political effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Research funded through this collaboration will address important questions about the consequences of health care reform in the U.S.—from financial security and family economic well-being, to labor supply and demand, participation in other public programs, family and children’s outcomes, differential effects by race/ethnicity/nativity or disability status, and politics and views of government.

RSF president Sheldon Danziger remarked: “I am very pleased that the Russell Sage Foundation is collaborating with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on this important new research venture. Our partnership with the RWJ Foundation will allow us to greatly expand our support for research in this area, extending the program into 2017.”

Since 1972, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked to identify the most pressing health issues facing America, with the understanding that health and health care are essential to the wellbeing and stability of U.S. society and the vitality of American families and communities. The partnership between RWJ and the Russell Sage Foundation promises to shed new light on the impact of one of the most significant regulatory overhauls of the U.S. health care system in decades.

Several new research projects in the Russell Sage Foundation’s core programs were funded at the Foundation’s June meeting of the Board of Trustees.

Awards approved in the Behavioral Economics program:

Mental Accounting and Fungibility of Money: Evidence from a Retail Panel
Jesse Shapiro (Harvard University) and Justine Hastings (Brown University)

Jesse Shapiro and Justine Hastings will complete a project that provide new tests of "mental accounting," or how households represent money in their financial decision-making. They will draw from unique panel data on seven years of customer purchases from a large grocery retailer in order to glean new insights into mental accounting through a real-world scenario.

Behavioral Biases and the Design of Student Loan Repayment Schemes
Lesley J. Turner, Kathleen Abraham, Emel Filiz-Ozbay, and Erkut Ozbay (University of Maryland)

Lesley J. Turner and colleagues will investigate the factors that affect students’ loan repayments, including the relationship between students’ expected earnings and their preference for income-based repayment plans, and whether students’ repayment behavior is affected by whether they voluntarily choose income-based plan or are instead assigned to one.

The Russell Sage Foundation has recently approved the following Presidential Authority awards in the Future of Work program, the Social Inequality program, and one non-program project.

Awards approved in the Future of Work program:

The Future of the American Worker
Steven Greenhouse, Journalist

Former New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse will write a book investigating the future of the American worker. He will examine broad issues affecting the labor market, including the rise and decline of traditional labor unions and the growth of alternative, non-union worker advocacy groups.

Long-Run Adaptation to Workplace Technological Change
Miguel Morin (University of Cambridge) and Rowena Gray (University of California, Merced)

Economists Miguel Morin and Rowena Gray will analyze the changing structure of American jobs between 1900 and 1940 in response to the spread of electrification. They will produce a comprehensive data series that will shed light on how workers are affected by new technologies.