Alex Mas

Studying social insurance with imperfect eligibility screening, focusing on Unemployment Insurance during its expansion in 2020 and 2021, from Adam Isen, @EliraKuka, and @BryanAStuart nber.org/papers/w35465

We @Arnold_Ventures work to improve accountability in higher ed, ensuring that students receive quality instruction and can earn a degree of value rather than wasting their time, money and Pell Grant $. Newest iteration of predatory colleges is the chatbot university, where instruction is 100% online with a chatbot guide and any interaction with an actual person is through a Reddit bulletin board. Even there, the "instructor" is unable to have any personal or direct contact with students. Maestro College is marketed as free to the student, with funding via federal Pell Grants of roughly $11k per year. Students often fail to realize using their funds here exhausts their capacity to use it at a quality college. It is also a waste of taxpayer funds. For-profit colleges without meaningful student support and opportunities for personal engagement have very poor learning outcomes. As a result, employers have learned to disregard credentials from these institutions even though economic mobility is the primary reason students enroll. It is possible for AI and other ed tech to be used to improve learning and/or lower costs. Innovations in this space may come from for-profits. But there is also significant incentive to milk the Pell Grant and federal student loan system while providing a worthless education. This investigation from @NewAmerica, with support from @Arnold_Ventures, details how Maestro appears to have run afoul of numerous federal laws and regulations. The Ed Dept and accreditors must vigorously enforce existing regs to limit the harm of predatory colleges.

The University of California regents have set a new, accelerated deadline: faculty must recommend by June 2027 whether to bring back SAT/ACT admissions requirements -- a sharp change of pace after an admissions board shelved a slower study plan last week: latimes.com/california/sto…

Thrilled to share I'll be joining UC Berkeley next year as an assistant professor in @UCBStatistics and affiliated with @Berkeley_EECS. My research will build methods to test/improve the implicit world models of AI systems, so that they reflect reality and human understanding.

This is an amazing quote from Lindsey Graham about when he realized how politics works. theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/…

NEW: UC’s admissions board has abruptly shelved its plan to study bringing back SAT/ACT -- in a move that leaves the direction of one of the university’s most closely watched debates unclear a day before the Board of Regents meets in San Francisco: latimes.com/california/sto…

Examining the labor market effects of overtime coverage in the United States, where salaried workers are covered for overtime if their base pay falls below a legislated salary threshold, from Simon Quach nber.org/papers/w35433