Image: Denisa Gándara (PhD 2016) and Erik Ness have a research article in the Journal of Higher Education, "Ideological Think Tanks and the Politics of College Affordability in the States." Gándara and Ness compiled an original data set of text produced by scrapping the web sites of conservative and progressive think tanks in five states to explore the language used surrounding of college costs. Specifically, they consider (1) How did progressive and conservative think tanks frame the issue of college affordability? and (2) What were the areas of convergence and divergence in framing the issue of college affordability between ideologically polarized think tanks? While the study finds real divergence in the root causes and some solutions, their findings do suggest possible avenues for ideologically neutral approaches to addressing the lack of college affordability. Gándara and Ness found the most convergence surrounding the reasons why college affordability is a problem and on two proposed solutions: increasing financial aid and promoting community college enrollment. Read full article at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00221546.2019.1574696 Type of News/Audience: Research
