Happy New Year from Pioneer Institute

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Dr. Wilfried Schmid, Dwight Parker Robinson Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University, who played a major role in drafting the 2000 Massachusetts Mathematics Curriculum Framework and served on the U.S. National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) in 2008.

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Matthew Hennessey, Wall Street Journal editor and author of Visible Hand, A Wealth of Notions on the Miracle of the Market, about how the principles of economics manifest themselves in our every day lives and how we can use that insight to better understand our personal and civic choices.

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer research associate Andrew Mikula about the need for affordable housing near the mass transit network and the requirements and local design opportunities of the 3A zoning reform law. Read Pioneer Institute's recent public comment on this topic.

Hubwonk Host Joe Selvaggi talks with ALVA10 Chief Executive Hannah Mamuszka and Dr. Blake Long about the perverse incentives imposed by Pharmacy Benefit Managers adding nearly $500 billion to U.S. drug costs.

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with constitutional scholar Ilya Shapiro about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination hearings and what her background and responses reveal about her views on the Constitution, the role of the Supreme Court, and her likely judicial positions relative to her fellow justices.

Education tax credits grew increasingly popular in 2021, with four more states enacting programs.  There are now 28 tax-credit scholarship (TCS) programs in 23 states, and they serve more than 325,000 students, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Dr. Arthur Levine, a scholar with New York University's Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy, a senior fellow and president emeritus of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and president emeritus of Columbia University's Teachers College. He shares the main findings and recommendations of a new book he recently co-authored, The Great Upheaval: Higher Education’s Past, Present, and Uncertain Future.

Over the past decade, the revenue for hospitals generated by the federal 340B drug discount program, initially intended to serve low-income, uninsured populations, has exploded even while a number of important Massachusetts hospitals have reduced the level of charity care they provide, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute. The Pioneer Institute study, “340B Drug Discounts: An Increasingly Dysfunctional Program,” notes that nationwide, 340B drug sales rose from $9 billion in 2014 to $38 billion in 2020.