January 2019

There’s a familiar correlation in social science: more education is associated with increased health in society. Now a WSU researcher will use a new grant from the Evidence for Action Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to examine whether more education can actually contribute to better health later in life. Ben Cowan, an associate professor in the School of Economic Sciences, leads the study with colleague Nathan Tefft at Bates College in Maine. Cowan said the dramatic increase in...

NEW ORLEANS —“Diversity” was top of mind when Angel Carter was applying to schools. Raised in an African-American enclave in Atlanta, she said, “I would have loved to go to an HBCU,” the acronym for historically black colleges and universities. But college should stretch you, she felt, so Carter chose Tulane, where the student body is 75 percent white. “I hadn’t had many interactions with white people,” said Carter, now a senior majoring in anthropology and cell biology. “I wanted to work on...

When then-President Barack Obama stood before a friendly and enthusiastic crowd at Macomb Community College, near Detroit, 10 years ago this year, the goals he set out were — as the president himself said — historic. Within a decade, he said on that day in 2009, community colleges like Macomb would collectively boost their number of graduates by five million. That would help return the United States to first in the world in the proportion of its population with the credentials needed to...