travis-h-olson.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

And I thought the technology and data use parts of my research agenda were going to be the safer parts. 🫠

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Other higher ed institutions should offer to enroll Harvard students, but allow them to take courses at Harvard. This has been done before. In my 3rd year of grad school, I spent the year at the University of Chicago as a visitor, but my tuition was paid to my home institution of UW-Madison.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

This is just an extreme example of what has been happening in education policy for decades. Demands for more and more data in order to enact "accountability" but in actuality that information is used to undermine institutions by ideological actors. We've just entered a final farcical stage.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Not only does Republican's budget disaster take away healthcare and food assistance, it attacks states that provide healthcare to children regardless of immigration status and makes families ineligible for the child tax credit if EITHER parent does not have a SSN. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/o...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

This passed 215-214. We're going to lose our healthcare because 3 senior Dems have died this year. We lost Roe because Ginsburg didn't retire. We lost the election because Joe ran for reelection. Our country is being destroyed because geriatric Dems can't retire and let go of power.

submitted 2 days ago • 179 comments

He missed the deadline to submit a single form 10 years ago, amidst family grief when his wife suffered a stillbirth. He did nothing illegal. Paid his taxes, completed citizenship documentation. But once you activate a police state, they don't care about individual circumstances.

submitted 2 days ago • 99 comments

say it again: 4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities ROI for NIH and NSF for local economies is conservatively 4x, often close to 10x demolishing higher education is economic sabotage

submitted 6 days ago • 69 comments

My feed is like: Things get Worse! (us) Things not great! (uk) Pet Things suck! (academic) Things suck! (non-academic) Cool art It Just Keeps Happening (us) People are dying (palestine) An interesting food or beverage Rent and housing crisis (canada) Nature pic Fun fact Job/cfp

submitted 8 days ago • 8 comments

The worst algorithmic scandal in UK education remains relatively unknown. Over a decade ago a TV investigation reported widespread cheating by international students on an English language test. It created a big scandal and anti-immigrant sentiment about international students...

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

This is exactly what we found in a case study of four universities trying to diversify their faculties. The most dysfunctional effort was buried in HR.

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Groups of large language models playing simple interactive games can develop social norms, such as adopting their own rules for how language is used https://go.nature.com/4kojSJL

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

I'm not one for pearl clutching but it is truly shocking to see people who work on behalf of the federal government speak to professionals just trying to do their jobs this way.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

This is intentional. Because higher costs (especially coupled with attacks on DEI) will mean fewer and disproportionately more privileged students going to college. Which curbs the power of universities. And which keeps anyone who isn't highly privileged from using college to grow their own power.

submitted 10 days ago • 7 comments

I committed to being this person in my statistics classes, and it’s the only reason I got through them.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Shocking … oh wait, no, totally tracks.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

For comparison, they're sad that white men are only 56% of the tenured faculty in 2023 after being 64% in 2013

submitted 11 days ago • 2 comments

Exactly this. www.theverge.com/policy/66568...

submitted 11 days ago • 21 comments

this is great: “here’s how i took over my county’s democratic party from the inside”

submitted 12 days ago • 9 comments

Where is the daily briefing from the Dem Shadow Cabinet? At this point not making this part of the daily media diet of the country seems negligent, political malpractice and a form of capitulation.

submitted 13 days ago • 99 comments

"We're not letting this administration fear monger us. They want immigrants to be running around scared, looking over their shoulder. We're not going to live like that." Judge finds Iraq war veteran can be deported, despite decades of lawful residence www.azcentral.com/story/news/p...

submitted 15 days ago • 17 comments

And it will be done in the name of equity.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

As per usual, Faine is cooking with gas here. I see a parallel to how David Goerlitz (“The Marlboro Man”) once said that tobacco company executives would be shocked to see him puffing away and tell him, “we sell it, we don’t smoke it.” AI operates in a similar way: not for my kids, but fuck yours.

submitted 15 days ago • 3 comments

Extrapolating from history: the labor market will cannibalize mid-tier knowledge workers, burn out senior knowledge workers, then shout at colleges & govt for not making enough labor-market ready grads, then govt will blame moms for not making K-12 prepare kids for college pre-labor-market skills.

submitted 15 days ago • 5 comments

How researchers at Bocconi guessed the Pope using network analysis ⬇️ www.unibocconi.it/en/news/netw...

submitted 15 days ago • 6 comments

I am unapologetically telling you right now that Chicago is going to be insufferable about this, there is still a fading cardboard John Paul II in a Michigan Ave storefront looking out at Grant Park because he spoke there once.

submitted 16 days ago • 180 comments

Go on, apply for this two-year post-doc in Oxford working (with e.g. me and Robert Trager) on Causal Systems Modeling for AI Governance! Please share this ad with anyone who might interested!

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

The only difference is that remote work gave managers some new ways to quantify and see into how employees have always behaved.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Imagine if we had a large number of free institutions where curious people could spend time connecting with other curious people and learning from individuals who had spent their lives developing a deep understanding of specific topics I wonder what we could call that

submitted 18 days ago • 1 comment

While the university has ended the group's special status designation, with the support of the student body, student guides are doubling down on their commitment to share their campus’ history.

submitted 18 days ago • 12 comments

Disclosing #AI use may make you seem less trustworthy. Across 13 experiments with 5,000+ participants, trust researchers at the University of Arizona found that even tech-savvy evaluators were skeptical when AI use was openly acknowledged.

submitted 18 days ago • 3 comments

Algorithmic injustice

submitted 19 days ago • 2 comments

Men are not constantly being told “you’re bad,” they are constantly being told “LEFT WING SJWS THINK YOU’RE BAD” by conservative propaganda. There’s a huge difference.

submitted 19 days ago • 170 comments

📣🧪 $25k grants for those who: 1. are working on research on STEM and education (including AI and CS, graduate education and MSIs, and scholarship that aims to reduce inequality), and 2. have had a recently terminated or cancelled grant from NSF. Early-career scholars prioritized

submitted 21 days ago • 2 comments

🚨Organizing a paper swap for early career edu policy researchers.🚨 Share a nearly-complete draft, exchange feedback, and connect with peers. Great if you’ve got a lingering project or diss chapter that could use feedback and soft deadlines to move it forward this summer. Sign up & learn more here:

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

I love adding this one data point to economic charts. It works every time.

submitted 25 days ago • 122 comments

The Research England funded REF-AI project explores GenAI's role in REF2029, examining current use, responsible adoption, and good practice, Share your views on GenAI in the REF2029: tinyurl.com/4ca8h2rm

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

Despite knowing the people on the search warrant weren't there, the ICE arrest team STILL took this family's phones, laptops, and life savings — and refused to leave a BUSINESS CARD so they could ask to get it back! This stuff is sadly not unique to ICE; it happens with regular police raids too.

submitted 25 days ago • 248 comments

Contrary to the pundit class’ insistence, someone talking to you on public transit has been so reviled for so long there was a painting about it 150 years ago

submitted 26 days ago • 72 comments