Education
How College Presidents Respond to Critiques of Higher Ed
According to Prof. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and co-author Steven Tian, the college and university presidents who attended the Yale Higher Education Leadership Summit on January 28 are ready to fight back against attacks and make the case that American higher education is an “irreplaceable beacon of light and truth.”

Century-Old Harvard Records Show How Social Connections Help the Elite
A study co-authored by Yale SOM’s Seth Zimmerman, drawing on a trove of archival student records, suggests that membership in exclusive clubs propelled students from the top prep schools to higher incomes, while good grades did little to lift other students into the top-earning tier.
Weakening Unions Can Lead to Gender Gap in Wages
In 2011, legislation in Wisconsin reduced the power of unions to negotiate teachers’ salaries. Within five years, male teachers started earning more than women did.
Leading Hartford Back to School
This week, students in the Hartford Public Schools, one of the largest districts in Connecticut, returned to the classroom for the first time since March. We talked to Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez about the challenges she has faced and the possibility of lasting change.
Training Girls for the Building Trades, Virtually
Demi Knight Clark, founder of She Built This City, describes how she remade a nonprofit that teaches hands-on buildings skills for a world forced to go virtual.
Equalizing School Spending Boosts Lifelong Income
School finance reforms that equalize spending across rich and poor neighborhoods improve the long-term economic outcomes of disadvantaged children.
Can Civics Education Repair a Failing Democracy?
Louise Dubé ’88 of the nonprofit iCivics argues that engagement in civic life requires skills that many schools no longer teach.
Does Performance-Based Pay Improve Teaching?
Yale SOM economist Barbara Biasi studied what actually happened when some school districts in Wisconsin started paying partly based on effectiveness.
Three Questions: Prof. Barbara Biasi on Teacher Pay
We asked Barbara Biasi, a labor economist with a focus on education, about this year’s teachers' strikes and the wider implications of how we compensate teachers.
What’s the Value of Higher Education?
Have political and fiscal debates about higher education lost sight of the value of education for individuals and society?
What Will It Take to Fix Public Education?
Are we making progress toward a better and more equitable education system? Yale Insights talked with former secretary of education John King, now president and CEO of the Education Trust.