At Ford School, public policy connects evidence to action
Celeste Watkins-Hayes
Ford School of Public Policy
Why public policy education matters
Public policy shapes nearly every aspect of our lives, from the water we drink and the health care we can access to the schools our children attend and the transportation that connects people to opportunity. Behind these everyday outcomes are choices about how public leaders weigh evidence, set priorities and allocate limited resources.
At the U-M’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, one question drives our research and teaching: How can evidence help public leaders make better decisions?
Producing evidence is only the first step. Public leaders must know how to evaluate research and use its findings responsibly within institutional and community contexts. Doing so requires both analytical tools and sound judgment.
That is why public policy education matters.
Central to that education is a research mindset. Students learn to ask good questions, test assumptions and revisit conclusions as new knowledge emerges. They learn to distinguish correlation from causation and consider not only whether a policy works, but for whom, under what conditions and at what cost.
Answering complex policy questions also requires expertise across disciplines. The challenges facing communities rarely fit neatly within the boundaries of a single field. Consider the rapid adoption of school cellphone restrictions. Education economist Brian Jacob, co-director of U-M’s Youth Policy Lab, is working with researchers in public health, firearm injury prevention and other fields to examine not simply whether schools should restrict phones, but which approaches work best for different students and schools, and how they affect learning, safety, discipline and well-being.
Ford School scholars bring varied disciplinary perspectives and methodological approaches to pressing public challenges. Their work across academic boundaries and with public and community partners generates questions grounded in policy and practice, strengthening both research and teaching.
I often describe the work of policy schools through the image of a three-legged stool. Its interconnected legs are policy analysis, policy communication and policy leadership. Each is essential. Analysis helps us define problems and identify what the evidence supports. Communication makes complex findings understandable and useful to different audiences. Leadership builds the coalitions and institutional support needed to move promising ideas toward implementation.
In our classrooms and research assistantships, students practice these skills on real problems. Last year, first-year graduate student Caroline Bach joined a study of India’s rural employment program, digging through years of records to learn which local officials actually handle wage-payment work. Her questions pushed the research team to revisit assumptions it had taken for granted.
Policy decisions inevitably involve values and judgment. Even the questions we ask and the outcomes we measure reflect choices about what matters. Research can clarify the likely consequences of different paths and illuminate the trade-offs involved. Public leaders must bring that knowledge together with democratic accountability and the perspectives of those affected.
Research-informed policymaking does not end when a policy is adopted. Even a promising approach can fall short if it is difficult to administer or access. A public benefit may exist on paper yet remain inaccessible to the people it is intended to serve.
Our faculty’s work on SNAP, the federal food assistance program, shows why implementation matters. Under new federal law, states with high payment error rates will have to cover part of the cost of food assistance. These errors often result from incomplete information or routine processing mistakes rather than fraud. Through the Better Government Lab, sociologist Pamela Herd and her colleagues are helping states reduce errors without adding paperwork for every applicant. Additional requirements can make it harder for eligible families to access benefits while increasing the burden on already strained state agencies.
The people who administer public programs and those who navigate them can identify barriers, unintended consequences and promising approaches that may not be visible in a dataset alone. Their knowledge can sharpen research questions and help policymakers develop more responsive solutions.
Success would look like states that reduce errors without losing eligible families and schools that choose phone rules based on what works for their students. Getting there takes leaders who can turn knowledge into action without losing the rigor, curiosity and humility good research requires. Preparing them is fundamental to the mission of a public research university and to the public good.