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Akil Bello

@akilbello.bsky.social

Shadow education vet → policy wonk & public intellectual | Coined "highly rejective colleges" (Congress & Urban Dictionary) | Netflix, NYT, Forbes | 5x FAFSA filer, CSS hater | data-driven contrarian | "Brilliance & foolishness" per sources akilbello.com

238 Posts149 Follower134 Folgt
Joshua Goodman@joshua-goodman.com · 7d ago

🚨New working paper alert!🚨 Private tutoring chains like Kumon and Sylvan have grown rapidly. Who uses them? Do they improve kids' skills? BU econ PhD student Samuel Nitkin and I provide answers in: "Kumon Up: Private Tutoring Centers and Student Achievement" www.nber.org/papers/w35671 1/?

Private tutoring chains like Kumon and Sylvan have expanded rapidly in recent decades. Combining data on business locations, household spending, and district test scores, we study who uses these centers and how they affect academic skills. Nearly half of tutoring users are from the top income decile, with Asian and White households five and two times as likely to purchase tutoring as Black and Hispanic households. A staggered differences-in-differences design shows the opening of a district's first chain center raises district-wide math and reading scores by 0.02-0.03 standard deviations, at a much lower cost than public spending typically producing similar gains. Math effects are largest for White and Asian students, so that center entry widens racial achievement gaps, though less so in more racially integrated districts. These private investments help their users, deepen educational inequality, and shape outcomes by which state accountability systems and families judge schools.
Akil Bello@akilbello.bsky.social · last wk.

A 2023 NCAA survey of 18- to 22-year-olds found that 51% of the women and two-thirds of the men have bet on sports. A senior at SMU estimated that among his fraternity brothers, it was 90-95%.

Robert Kelchen@robertkelchen.com · last wk.

I don't think that enough people realize how big of an issue sports gambling (including so-called "predictions markets") are on college campuses. Take a few minutes and read through this family's challenge with gambling addictions that led to stopping out of college and a mountain of debt.

NY Times Pitchbot@nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 2w ago

Elon Musk is spending $100,000,000 to support Republican candidates in the 2026 election. But he also gave $5,000 to Hillary Clinton in 2016. As a fair-minded, balanced reporter, the best way for me to put this is that Elon Musk has given money to both parties.

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 3w ago

I once worked at a university that gutted an entire (very popular and useful) learning center and replaced it with two guys who would teach you how to host blogs. every student had to have a blog. Every single one. Our syllabus had to mention blogs. We had to teach WITH blogs.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst.myatproto.social · 3w ago

I cannot begin to count the amount of technology tools I have been told in the last 20 years that I need to teach my students how to use because they were the future. 95% of them are gone. A tool is a tool.

Tim “Positive Subway” Smith@positivesubway.bsky.social · 3w ago

The richest colleges that are a direct pipeline for philosophy and history undergrads into $250,000+ entry-level jobs in finance, consulting, and tech are indoctrinating students into socialism via unlimited salad and fro-yo and the Journal of Wall Street is ON IT

Robert Kelchen@robertkelchen.com · 3w ago

I normally love when an elite publication runs pieces by faculty at non-elite colleges. But to have that person write on an issue that affects the tiniest slice of American higher education is a missed opportunity. Only 15% students live on campus and most are acutely aware of paying the bills.

Robert Kelchen@robertkelchen.com · 3w ago

I normally love when an elite publication runs pieces by faculty at non-elite colleges. But to have that person write on an issue that affects the tiniest slice of American higher education is a missed opportunity. Only 15% students live on campus and most are acutely aware of paying the bills.

Opinion | How Colleges Produce Socialists

When your first brush with adulthood involves endless consumption and no cost, it gives you the wrong idea of how the world works.

wsj.com