Jonathan Smith

College Enrollment Patterns After SFFA v. Harvard We study how U.S. high school students’ patterns of college entry changed in the first year after the Supreme Court’s 2023 SFFA v. Harvard ruling. Drawing on a rich dataset linking more than 12 millio...

"high-achieving underrepresented minority college-goers were up to 10 percentage points less likely to enroll in highly selective colleges... “cascading” down the college selectivity distribution into less selective colleges with lower graduation rates and earnings." edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1392

Thrilled to kick off the Spring 2026 Economics Seminar Series at @gsueconomics.bsky.social 🎉

If you’re in Atlanta and would like to join one of the talks, feel free to reach out!

🚨📢 Call for papers - IV Workshop on Economics of Education, Valle Nevado 🇨🇱⛷️

📅 August 18-21
📍Valle Nevado, Chile

Keynotes by Josh Goodman (
@buwheelock.bsky.social ) and Chris Neilson (Yale)

Submit by March 6 👇
bit.ly/49QSsd3

@joshua-goodman.com @christopherneilson.bsky.social

The College Backlash Is a Mirage Americans are more pessimistic than ever about the value of a degree—but enrollment keeps going up.

"The College Backlash Is a Mirage"

Americans are more pessimistic than ever about the value of a degree—but enrollment keeps going up.

By @rosehorowitch.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

MDRC's THE-RCT data file, an individual-level data file including 33 higher ed RCTs and 80k students, is now available on OpenICPSR with a couple updates:

-Two new studies (MMA and ASAP Westchester)
-More years of data for three studies (EASE, DPP, and ModMath)

www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/pr...

Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges* Abstract. We use anonymized admissions data from several colleges linked to income tax records and SAT and ACT test scores to study the determinants and ca

Recently accepted by #QJE, “Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges,” by Chetty (@Oppinsights), Deming, and Friedman: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

Thanks. And agreed, wide open.

I was excited when you posted this because I wanted to know too, but I don't see any public responses. Did you get any private responses?

The GOP’s top think tank just defended an open Nazi Reasonable people can disagree about whether Hitler was good, says the Heritage Foundation.

Kevin Roberts' defense of Nick Fuentes is a watershed moment: the right has officially declared open, unabashed Hitlerism to be an acceptable position in their coalition

www.vox.com/politics/466...

Econ of Ed (and other) friends: what are the best studies linking in-college interventions to labor market outcomes? Especially interested in those that improve outcomes via different mechanism than completion. E.g. if a college wants to improve earnings of grads, what should they do?

Meet the 2025–2026 job market candidates from GSU Economics! 🎉
@gsueconomics.bsky.social #econsky

👇 Here’s a quick introduction to each candidate.

Huge thanks to @jonisaacsmith.bsky.social for arranging my visit.

GSU has an impressive econ department, full of great applied micro folks and the Georgia Policy Lab that supports work directly relevant to improving public policy.

Our 2nd annual @gsueconomics.bsky.social PhD Summer Symposium was a success! 🎉 It was great to showcase our GSU Economics JMCs for 2025–26.

Thanks to @jonisaacsmith.bsky.social y.social for co-organizing, and a big thank-you to our endowed chairs for sponsoring this event!

Sounds about right to me.

Hopkins shows clearly that this is not about wokeness, or antisemitism, or whatever other excuse they may claim. It’s about bringing universities to heel, following the playbook of authoritarians everywhere.

It's a paper about voting, yes. But really, it's a paper about peer effects.

We think we are uniquely able to identify causal peer effects in a vitally important behavior.

Deep cut. And better/accurate spelling of Marcia.

Depends on whether Marsha voted. Marsha, Marsha, Marsha..

The suspense is killing me...I hope it will last.

I'm lucky enough to have Alex as my new-ish colleague! Go @gsueconomics.bsky.social!

This looks familiar and great!

Very cool to see this paper (my former JMP!) forthcoming at one of my favorite journals!

Economist Jonathan Smith Receives Georgia State Ignite Research Award The Faculty Research Partnership Award recognizes an individual who, in partnership with an external, non-academic entity, conducts research that makes a significant impact.

Congrats to our own Economics faculty member @jonisaacsmith.bsky.social for receiving the 2025 GSU Ignite Faculty Research Partnership Award for his work with Achieve Atlanta !!!

Economist Jonathan Smith Receives Georgia State Ignite Research Award news.gsu.edu/2025/04/04/e...

Best and brightest? The impact of student visa restrictiveness on who attends college in the US Before the COVID-19 pandemic, student F-1 visa applicants faced a 27 percent refusal rate that varies by time and region. Recent immigration policies …

The chilling effect of canceling student visas is likely to go beyond the impacts of “typical” student visa restrictiveness, which my work shows pushes away the best and brightest students from the US. Not smart policy, but we seem to be way beyond that…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A new practitioner's guide to staggered difference-in-difference designs

arxiv.org/pdf/2503.13323

AERA has just learned that all restricted-use NCES data licenses will be cancelled, possibly as early as March 20. We urgently request that all AERA members and others in the research community with restricted-use licenses take these two actions: www.aera.net/Research-Pol...

"International students increase schools’ funding via tuition payments, which leads to increased in-state enrollment and lower tuition prices."

Link to working paper below

The Cost of the Government’s Attack on Columbia American universities have given the country prosperity and security. The Trump administration’s attack on academic freedom endangers all of that.

This is the way. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Meet Evan Anzoo, a five-year-old boy in South Sudan who died when Elon Musk shut down USAID and the boy lost access to his HIV meds. Musk says no one has died because of the aid shutdown, but that's because he didn't look. RIP, Evan, you deserved better. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Maybe we can add an asterisk on your name, "*Published, in spite of Josh's comments."