Faculty @BostonCollege; Bruni Family Fellow @HooverInst; Fellow @ManhattanInst & @fsuigc. Loyal @VanderbiltU alum. Opinions my own. Whose else would they be?
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Michael Hartney retweeted
"There are some excellent schools within these systems. But the underlying logic is one that leads you to more excuse-making and away from accountability." - @reihan
Why American Cities Cost So Much and Deliver So Little - The Atlantic theatlantic.com/podcasts/202…
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Michael Hartney retweeted
It was an honor to appear on Uncommon Knowledge with @p_m_robinson, a program I've watched and admired for many years. We speak here on the country's significant fiscal challenges.
Hoover Institution economist @JoshRauh joins Uncommon Knowledge with @P_M_Robinson to examine America's mounting federal debt and the political obstacles to controlling government spending.
Rauh discusses why higher taxes and faster economic growth alone cannot close the budget gap, warns that rising interest costs could lead to an inflationary crisis, and argues for slowing the growth of entitlement spending.
The conversation also covers President Trump's tariff policies; California's proposed billionaire tax and why it has the potential to drive taxpayers out of the state; and the lessons offered by states such as Texas and Florida.
Watch @UncKnowledge on Hoover+: hoover.org/plus/research/bil…
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Michael Hartney retweeted
New from Educational Liberty Fellow @MichaelTHartney in @The74.
Using two national surveys of 1,059 U.S. adults sponsored by FSU’s Institute for Governance and Civics, Hartney examines Americans’ views on schools becoming more white or more Asian.
🔗: the74million.org/article/do-…
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Hartney: New survey finds Republicans and Democrats support merit-based admissions, but they react very differently depending on which groups benefit buff.ly/Y15Bv3j
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Michael Hartney retweeted
This is the biggest challenge in evidenced-based policymaking.
Your paper is very clear and useful to the field. It confirms concerns that I voiced publicly in 2017. Seeing it is a bit like someone saying to me "you weren't crazy after all," years after I witnessed a somewhat implausible traumatic event in which people didn't believe my testimony.
I was an remain a free trade enthusiast, but I also wanted to understand the 2016 election, and Autor et al's work was a big theme that I felt I needed to explore. I had long admired Autor's labor market research on skills and tasks.
My 2016 work on presidential preferences used their data and found no relationship at all between trade exposure or even manufacturing exposure and Trump support, which was my first clue that something was off.
This was less notable when it became clear that the Autor et al trade exposure variable had no meaningful correlation with any economic outcome (unemployment rate, household income, etc) that I had been studying during my time at the Brookings Metro Program as a key indicator of regional prosperity.
What was very surprising to see was that I could not replicate their results until I a) used their exact data and b) used their exact code. Using alternatives for either failed to replicate, and I told them so privately.
In fact, not only was the regional data not playing out as expected (more "exposed" areas were no worse off in 2015 than other areas), but other national data were inconsistent with the story. Manufacturing layoffs and separations per worker were less common than those in domestic un-exposed sectors.
After realizing that the stacked model was the key issue (comparing late 1990s outcomes to ~2007 outcomes), I wrote up my results, shared it with them, and tried to publish as a comment but could not find a receptive journal--so tried as a full paper at AER, since they published the original work.
Debating Autor et al did nothing to help my career and became a major distraction from work I was supposed to be doing. It is easy to understand why many people don't do it. My 2017 paper was rejected by the (now) incoming AEA President Penny Goldberg, who as editor at AER at the time, on the flimsiest of excuses.
I'm sure the Borusyak et al paper hides the bad results for Author et al to avoid controversy and facilitate publication. Their Supplemental Table C3 is very similar to my preferred results. It is reassuring to see that their other results, relaxing various assumptions, are consistent with what I was finding.
I have nothing against Author, Dorn, and Hanson. They have every right to defend themselves vigorously against criticism of their work. I'm sure they believed they were right.
At the same time it has become astonishingly clear to me that a) academics in every field are not capable of objectively reconsidering their own work (probably myself included), and should not be assumed to be capable of doing so; b) they follow and perpetuate narratives, often erroneous ones, to advance their careers. These narratives are rarely, if ever, directly tested, because doing so would be professionally awkward, embarrassing to many others, and run counter to the political preferences of most of their colleagues.
I have seen this to an incredible degree in sociology, as I am working on a meta-analysis that completely contradicts a dominate narrative, and I have seen it across social sciences and humanities with respect to the lasting influence of Marxism, which still leads many academic writers to posit--without even trying to prove it--that there are large causal effects of growing up with low socio-economic status, and these effects would be eliminated with income/wealth redistribution.
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The lack of progress in any meaningful K12 reform is beyond depressing and should make it a key pillar of the abundance movement. We will never have abundance in the absence of an educated and civically oriented population.
the74million.org/article/15-…
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Very interesting new research from @acjohnston0
Many people hope remote work will raise birth rates. No commute, more flexibility, a chance to live near family.
I test the idea in a new paper. Among married women, the 2020 expansion of remote work reduced births. 🧵
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Michael Hartney retweeted
Vanderbilt is joining in as Nashville celebrates its first #DollyDay. 🦋📚💓
From lighting campus pink to supporting @DollysLibrary in Nashville and New York City, we’re celebrating Dolly’s legacy of music and generosity.
Learn more: vu.edu/xhmex
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Michael Hartney retweeted
This is an incredible article. It basically concedes all of my points -- including, critically, that their best estimate of new associates degree attainment is of same magnitude as their best estimate of diversion from four-year schools -- but then claims I "distort" their data!
Opinion: OSU prof distorted our data on Columbus Promise. We must defend the truth | Opinion dispatch.com/story/opinion/c…
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Michael Hartney retweeted
Like this is an intro to Econ essay prompt: “What’s wrong with this statement?”
If you answer “Nothing” you get zero credit.
President Trump Explains Trade Deficits:
“If we buy 2 billion dollars worth of Bananas from Brazil, we’re actually losing 2 billion dollars. So if we stop eating bananas, we actually save 2 billion dollars”.
It’s just simple Economics.
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Michael Hartney retweeted
China only tests 14% of its kids!!! It's "juking the stats" and @WSJopinion is falling for it. Put our 10 best states--MA, NJ, CO, etc-- up against China and we read and write just as well.
Chinese students are lapping U.S. children. The latest global education comparisons show the real competitive threat.
on.wsj.com/4yxthWs
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Michael Hartney retweeted
Much has been said by racists, politicians, and racist politicians (like Bo French) about Indians and UT Austin admissions. I thought I should shed some light so their racism could be slightly more intelligent.
I'm a brown kid. I grew up in Frisco, went to a massive Texas high school, and went to UT.
I would wager that the kids in this picture and I have practically the same background. Like me, they probably went to a massive, pressure-cooker suburban Texas high school, and survived the gauntlet to earn their admissions.
These aren’t foreigners. State law requires 90% of UT's freshman class to be Texas residents. 75% of those in-state seats go to automatic admission on class rank. These are Texans.
Texas, for better or worse, is one of the few meritocratic college admissions schemes in the country for a school of its caliber. The rules are simple. Today, the top 5% of a public school's graduating class is automatically accepted. There is nothing to game. You can’t fake being a competitive rower or have some consultant write your essays for you. There isn’t anything to steal; it’s all there on the table to compete for.
And the competition starts the moment the bell rings for your first period of freshman year. You are ranked in your class every single year, for us, #1 to #450. You knew exactly where you were, exactly how hard you had to compete. My year was even less competitive than it is today. The top 6% made the cut, so that’s an all-out war for ~27 kids to get auto-accepted into UT.
So we worked our butts off. Here's what my life was like, starting in kindergarten.
Every summer, before the school year started, I had to finish the upcoming year's math textbook.
I sweated over getting As, even in elementary school. One funny memory is walking to my parents' room, crying, to report my first-ever 89 on a report card.
I did Kumon, my least favorite thing in the world. I still hate that weird half-smile that is their logo.
I went to math and science competitions, where I always lost, and came home crying again. (Quite the crybaby, wasn't I!)
And everyone else around me worked just as hard. Actually, a lot of the kids worked much harder. I know people who took extra classes (zero period) just to boost their GPA. Who routinely slept 5 hours a night to nail every assignment they had after band practice. Who were distraught when they got a 98 instead of a 100. People who stopped doing things they loved, like sports or arts, because those classes dragged down their GPA.
People put their entire life force into getting into this school.
I wasn't even in the top 10% of my class. The competition was too good. I wasn't disciplined enough to hang with them. I got in as one of the 22.5% of admits who are at-large Texans.
These are American kids who earned their way into this school in the most American way possible. Competition. They were told the rules, they competed, and they got the number. And on Saturday they were in that stadium in burnt orange, screaming their heads off, like every other Texan at DKR or around the country. I can’t feel anything but pride for them. That they get to live the dream that so many of us dreamt growing up!
Kids like this have helped improve UT’s standing on the national stage. They made it out of the pressure cooker and placed well in Finance, Big Tech, and more recently, startups. They meaningfully contribute to the economies of our state and country. You should be proud of them too.
Overall, this seems like a meritocratic (albeit flawed) way for Texans to be admitted to our state’s flagship school. It’s racially blind. But politicians like Bo French are asking for something different. They want the student body to rebalance racially.
Surely they aren’t advocating for affirmative action, are they?
I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.
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Michael Hartney retweeted
Being on an APSA panel with the incredible Jane Mansbridge (in addition to my friend @MichaelTHartney and "In Covid's Wake" authors Macedo and Lee) was a once-in-a-lifetime experience!
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Michael Hartney retweeted
The DEI angle is getting the most attention, but more striking is that only 26% of new poli sci PhDs found tenure track jobs. Even Harvard is <50%! That's already a highly selected group that actually finishes degree.
We need an honest conversation about PhD demand vs. supply.
A snapshot of 2020s academia. A newly published study tracked the success of political science PhDs on the job market in 2023.
Note the difference between "non-URM" males and everyone else.
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Michael Hartney retweeted
ACADEMIC JOBS 🚨 💫@osuchasecenter @OhioState seeks faculty of all ranks and disciplines for several tenured/tenure-track faculty positions at the rank of Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor, to begin AY 2027–28. The app. deadline is October 1. buff.ly/qX29HAP
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Michael Hartney retweeted
As school starts across America, reading scores just hit their lowest point in 25 years.
We know two things: doing more of the same will produce the same results: near failure — and parents have lost confidence in their children’s schools.
We built this country on the idea that failure is not an option, but on education, elected leaders in both parties have accepted failure as the path of least resistance. That’s not true for their own kids and should not be true for yours.
It is time for a change.
nytimes.com/2026/09/08/us/us…
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