Economic adviser Rouse to return to U. in March

As deputy chair of the CEA, Rouse focused on post-secondary education issues as well as labor market, international trade and housing policies. She has been a member of the council since March 2009.

Rouse said in an interview that she looks forward to being back with her students and colleagues and continuing her research, which will allow her to return to a more stable and predictable schedule.

“Working with the Council of Economic Advisers was very focused on dealing with the issue or the crisis of the moment,” Rouse said. “Being a professor was thinking about the long-term, planning research projects and letting the long-term ideas germinate.”

Rouse said that her involvement with the student aid bill that was passed last March was a particularly rewarding experience in Washington. The bill significantly increased funding for community colleges.

Rouse described the low graduation rates at community colleges as “the untold story of higher education” and said that the initiative is something she has worked toward both directly and indirectly for much of her career.

Many of Rouse’s colleagues described her as the ideal person for the policy advisory role that she played in Washington.

“She has put her stamp on higher education policy, including a record expansion of support for community colleges,” Wilson School professor Alan Krueger said in an e-mail. “Her early research showed that community colleges produced considerable benefits for their students, so she was the most appropriate economist in the world to work on this topic.”

Krueger recently spent nearly two years working at the Treasury and has also known Rouse on a personal level since they met at Harvard where she was an undergraduate and he was a graduate student.

Chair of the economics department Gene Grossman also described Rouse as “one of the leading experts in the world on education matters.”

Several University professors emphasized the benefit to undergraduate and graduate students of learning from professors with real-world policy experience.

“The ability to combine the kind of rigorous analytical thinking that our department is known for with a deep awareness of what the issues are and how they’re being debated in Washington will certainly be a benefit to students,” Grossman said.

“Economists like Professor Rouse who have worked in policy positions are equipped to teach students how economic research actually gets used in practice,” dean of the Wilson School Christina Paxson said in an e-mail. “They can help students understand how the interplay between politics and policy-making influences outcomes.”

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Paxson has also worked with Rouse on The Future of Children, a journal that makes research on children’s issues more accessible to policy makers and practitioners.

Rouse said that an important part of her role in the CEA was to provide a bridge between academia and Washington.

“I think research can have policy relevance just as long as there’s someone who can do that translation,” Rouse said. “That’s part of what the Council of Economic Advisers does — that translation between the economic world and the policy world.”

At the University, Rouse will return to a number of research projects. A major study that she is working on examines the effects of performance-based scholarships on recipients’ time usage with regard to academics.

Despite her many commitments, Rouse has also acted as a mentor to a number of students at the University.

Kimberlee Joseph GS, who is pursuing an master’s degree in public affairs in the Wilson School, described Professor Rouse as highly engaged in the lives of her students.

“She’s always willing to make time to help you figure out the little and the big stuff despite her busy schedule,” Joseph said. “She really helped me think about how I could bring my own dreams to fruition and distill what I want to do.”

Joseph added that learning from professors who were willing to share their experiences and networks in guiding students was one of the most rewarding aspects of her educational experience at the University.

“We have the kind of access to the kind of people that you would only dream about,” Joseph said. “With people like [Rouse], now I can just call her and say, ‘I heard about this. What does this mean for people of color in the long term?’ And she would probably be willing to have a conversation with me.”

Emily Sands ’09, who is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in economics at Harvard, worked with Rouse on research on gender discrimination in the playwriting industry during her senior year at the University.

Sands said that Rouse was a particularly important mentor for her because of Rouse’s commitment to both publishing noteworthy research and having a real-world impact through public policy.

“Working with [Rouse] inspired me to go into academia, and it inspired me to focus on the intersection of labor and public economics,” Sands said.

Rouse graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1986 and received a Ph.D. at the same institution in 1992. She became an economics professor at the University in 1992 and has since published research focusing on labor economics and the economics of education.

Rouse last served in a policy role over a decade ago when she served on the National Economic Council under President Clinton from 1998 to 1999.