Combining data, research, and analysis, Sandy Baum writes and speaks extensively on the successes and challenges of higher education in the United States with a focus on financing, access, and affordability.
Recently Released
Listen to Sandy’s April 17, 2025 comments on the conflict between Harvard and the executive branch.
Read Sandy’s May 29,2024 blog post on why doubling the maximum Pell Grant is not the best option for helping low-income students pay for college.
Listen to Sandy’s September 23, 2023 comments on changes in colleges admissions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision and changes to the federal financial aid system.
Sandy’s 2023 book with Michael McPherson, Campus Economics: How Economic Thinking Can Help Improve College and University Decisions explains basic economic concepts relevant to decision making on campus. It is an invaluable primer on the constructive role economic reasoning can play in campus debate and compromise.
Sandy’s 2022 book with Michael McPherson, Can College Level the Playing Field: Higher Education in an Unequal Society, places higher education in the context of inequalities before and after college, explaining why higher education is not a silver bullet for eradicating economic inequality and social injustice.
Listen to Sandy’s August 29, 2022 comments about student debt forgiveness on The Indicator from Planet Money
Read the transcript of Sandy’s debate about forgiving student debt on the New York Times’ “The Argument,” March 10, 2021.
Visit Sandy’s Urban Institute guide to state financial aid programs, “Building a State Financial Aid Program”
Visit Urban Wire, the blog of the Urban Institute, to read Sandy’s regular posts.
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Making College Work: Pathways to Success for Disadvantaged Students
by Harry J. Holzer & Sandy Baum
View an in-depth presentation here
Student Debt: Rhetoric and Realities of Higher Education Financing, uses evidence to explain the realities of student debt and how the current discourse obscures serious problems in how Americans make decisions about and pay for college.
Learn more about some of the policy recommendations in the book or purchase a copy.
Sandy Baum 