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Research Archive

June 20, 2025

What Kids Need—and Adults Need to Know—to Combat the Youth Mental Health Crisis

Starting this fall students in New York will join those in other states like California in not being able to access cellphones during the day. These bans are the culmination of years of education and activism by parents, teachers and researchers concerned about the effect of technology not only on academic performance but also on…

June 20, 2025

Senate Embraces “Do No Harm” for Higher Education

The Hippocratic Oath is coming for higher education. Last week, Senate Republicans released a package of higher education reforms that includes a “do no harm” standard for colleges: Degree programs would be ineligible for federal student loans if their former students’ earnings are too low. If enacted, the proposal would improve on the status quo, as the…

June 16, 2025

Accountable for Outcomes: We Need Evidence-Based Funding Models 

Key Points  Introduction Amid escalating college costs, mounting student debt, and rising college graduate underemployment, students of all backgrounds increasingly question college as a path to economic mobility. This shift has sparked interest in alternatives to college—from high school career and technical education (CTE) programs to short-term adult training courses proposed for Pell Grant funding…

June 12, 2025

The Senate’s Higher Education Reforms Are Strong (But Could Be Stronger)

Senate Republicans recently unveiled their suite of higher education reform proposals, part of a broader tax-and-spending bill making its way through Congress. The package is strong: it would impose commonsense limits on federal student loans and create a saner loan repayment system. However, it forgoes obvious changes that would save taxpayers more money and would better hold…

June 12, 2025

Lingering Absence in Public Schools: Tracking Post-Pandemic Chronic Absenteeism into 2024

Key Points Introduction It has been over five years since the US shut down for COVID, and in many ways, the country has moved past the pandemic. For US schools, however, the pandemic’s toll has not passed so quickly. Student aca­demic achievement remains depressed, and chronic absenteeism continues to hover substantially above the pre-pandemic baseline….

June 5, 2025

Measuring the Value of Nondegree Credentials

Event Summary On June 5, AEI’s Mark Schneider, in partnership with the Burning Glass Institute (BGI), hosted an event to discuss the value of nondegree credentials. The first discussion was a conversation between BGI President Matt Sigelman and Dr. Schneider, in which they gave context to the discussion by introducing an upcoming report and website,…

May 28, 2025

The Challenge: A Complex and Inefficient Student Loan System

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May 22, 2025

Course Correction: Rebuilding The Federal Student Loan System After Biden’s Mismanagement

Key Points Introduction Thirty-five million federal student loan borrowers went back into repayment in October 2024 after the government had suspended their student loan payments, in effect, for four and a half years. Already, delinquencies have shot up, and a wave of loan defaults looms. Borrowers will feel the pain—but so will the federal budget…

May 15, 2025

The Pandemic Is Over. It’s Time for Schools to Get the Message.

More than five years after the covid-19 pandemic began, the havoc it wreaked on American students and schools is alarmingly clear by nearly every measure. But there is one glaring exception: high school graduation rates. Even as test scores cratered, public school enrollments plummeted, and chronic absenteeism — the percentage of students missing at least one-tenth of the school…

May 14, 2025

Graduation in the Time of COVID: The Weakened Relationship with Chronic Absenteeism

Key Points Read the full PDF. Read a brief with the research highlights. Executive Summary The COVID-19 pandemic and schools’ responses to it resulted in learning loss that reversed two decades of progress on student achievement and drove chronic absenteeism to unprecedented heights. Yet graduation rates did not fall over the same period— instead, they…