Group Assignment

Overview

For the group assignment, you will conduct a semester-long research project with your groups. Your group will choose one of the clients below (see Section 6) to advise on the client’s issue outlined in the prompt. For your client’s policy issue, you will: i) describe the background on the policy issue, including any research evidence on the factors that impact said issue; ii) provide your own data analysis that helps describe either the problem itself or a simulation/analysis comparing the alternative policy proposals you are considering (draw on what you learned in 501, 503, 504, and 505 here); iii) describe the details, strengths, and weaknesses of the status quo situation, your client’s current policy proposal, and an original alternative proposal you develop or adopt for consideration from existing ideas (i.e., from think tanks, scholars, GAO recommendations, other states/localities, other elected officials, etc.); iv) analyze the three proposals (including the status quo) regarding their likely impacts on the problem they are trying to solve, their costs, and the political implications of each (i.e., the key stakeholders in support or opposition of each and the likely political impacts of each stakeholder’s view; here, you’ll want to draw on what you learned in 500 and parts of 506).

For this assignment, you will prepare a report of no more than 20 pages (page limit does not include tables, figures, or references page). The report and a video presentation summarizing the report will be due by December 10th, 2025.

Note

Remember, after doing your research and analysis, it is entirely possible to recommend the status quo, the client’s original proposal (as is or modified), or the additional alternative you consider (as is or modified) based on your assessment. The key will be basing that argument on a good read of existing knowledge, good evidence created yourselves, and sound reasoning and analysis.

Details

In the following, I lay out the sections that should be included in your 20 page (or less) report plus a one-page executive summary, in order, with details on expectations for each section. Overall, the format should use APA citation formatting (for both in-text citations and references list), 12-point Times New Roman font, and single-spaced. The first page should be a cover sheet with a title and all group member names clearly printed.

Executive Summary

This section does not count toward your page count. The report must include a 1-page, single-spaced summary of the full report. The summary should lay out the problem, guiding principles for the solution, the three alternative approaches considered, and finally, the final recommendation. Be clear and concise.

Note

Many students find summarizing their extended research in a limited space challenging, but such summarizing is an important skill to build. A big part of being prepared in a professional role is doing all the work to get to your answer, knowing how you got to your answer well enough to answer clarifying questions, and identifying for yourself and others what is truly important for making a particular decision. Remember that in this context, there’s a full report detailing your process and thinking that will follow the summary; it’s okay for the summary to leave details out to get to the bottom-line points.

Introduction

A 1-2 page introduction that should resemble the executive summary, but with added details on how you approached the problem and how the remainder of the report is structured. A good introduction should provide readers a clear understanding of how you are defining the problem, how you are proposing to resolve the problem, how you are weighing solutions, and the process by which you analyzed your options (e.g., what data did you use? what criteria were policies judged against?). Note that professional reports are not mystery novels - readers should know your final conclusion by the end of the introduction.

Background and Related Research

A 4-6 page summary of research that informs your decision-making. Your research should center on what the evidence says about the policy problem your client is tackling (e.g., the effects of congestion and current congestion rates; housing supply and housing affordability nationally; or current land-use and economic activity in a downtown area), the evidence regarding the status quo and the two policy alternatives you are weighing (your client’s and the additional alternative), what has been successful in similar cases in other areas/cities/states/countries, and any evidence that describes the size and direction of effects of these policies to anchor your own projections later in the report. Do not quote articles or materials directly. Instead, summarize the literature in your own words with citations to works appropriately placed throughout the text.

This section should close with a table or figure that describes the problem as it stands now or in recent years using data you download and analyze yourself, and your should write a clear description of the problem using insights from the table and data. Note that you should also describe the data - what data did you use? what years? where did you get it from? what variables did you include? - in this last part of this section.

Tip - Data

The Current Population Survey, American Community Survey, and other similar data from Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics will likely be good sources. For local or state government issues, you may have to look around city or state government sites or identify only data from the relevant cities or states in the national datasets listed above. These data can be found on the Census website or, more readily for your needs, on IPUMS (for instance, the IPUMS CPS can be found here but a Google search for “IPUMS ACS” or “IPUMS NHIS” will bring up the IPUMS repository of those government datasets as well). This analysis can be as simple or as sophisticated as you like - I just would like to see you apply the analytic skills learned in your data analysis classes in the program.

Tip - Research Basics

A good approach to doing the background research is to create a list of broad, general search terms that inform the basic themes of what you are doing. For example, if researching a new effort to assign bonuses to good teachers, I would include: “teacher effectiveness,” “teacher pay,” “teacher pay for performance,” “teacher effects,” and maybe “teacher collective bargaining agreements” as reasonable potential starting terms. Once you have your list, use it to search in premier academic journals on the topics (JPAM, PAR, JPART, AER, APSR and JHR are good outlets for this example) and in GAO, CRS, and CBO reports to cast a wide net of potential information. I also recommend searching think tanks like Brookings Institute, Urban Institute, Niskanen Center, NBER Working Papers, and CBPP. I recommend searching directly at the journal’s websites or, in GoogleScholar, type the search term then add source:“Journal Title” to the search. I recommend using year filters in Google Scholar to get both older and newer research on the subject. Read the abstracts and executive summaries to think about even a loose fit with what you are doing to narrow the number of papers to what’s most relevant. Now you have a collection of literature to draw on for informing your background section.

Policy/Program Alternatives Considered

This section will include subsections for each of the three alternative proposals (the status quo, their proposed solution, an alternative you introduce for consideration) for advising your client on a solution for the problem you chose to help solve. Each proposal should be 3-4 pages and should include 1) an overview and justification of the status quo situation or policy proposal, 2) a short overview of the proposal’s costs (both direct and indirect, such as opportunity costs or negative externalities) and benefits, 3) a stakeholder analysis of 3-4 main stakeholders impacted by the proposed policy, and 4) the political costs and benefits of the proposal based on your stakeholder analysis. You may use no more than 3 tables, in text, in each proposal subsection. Tables should fit on one page, include a title above them, and be discussed in the text to aid reader understanding and complement the proposal narrative.

Tip - Costs, Benefits, and Politics

When discussing costs and benefits, use your research to create grounded and defensible estimates. If, for instance, one externality is pollution, do not simply list pollution as an externality; instead, be specific about the kind of pollution, the health care costs related to exposure to that pollution, the estimate number of people subject to exposure-related health issues, and the estimated economic cost of that exposure. Treat benefits similarly - look at the same proposed policy in other places and any research documenting benefits, then estimate the benefits of your proposal using population or scale differences in your client’s context. Finally, when doing your stakeholder analysis, be sure to quantify some of the political angles - how many voters will be affected positively versus negatively? Which stakeholders have power and what kind of power, financial resources, and commitment to the issue do they have?

Analysis of the Trade-offs and Recommendation

The final section will be a 3-5 page analysis of the three plans in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, equity, and political impact of each plan leading to your final recommendation. As with the background and related research section, this section should include some research on how to define and measure these dimensions of each plan and anchor your recommendation in how each plan compares on these four dimensions. In the introduction, the nature and history of the problem you are tackling and your goals in solving it should have been articulated clearly and will help you gauge each proposed alternative proposals against those goals and priorities.

Roles and Responsibilities

As with any team project, it is helpful to have clear roles and responsibilities in completing the project. Below is a table of roles and responsibilities that each group will need to assign. I highly recommend groups assigning the editing role to who they believe to be a strong writer in the group.

Role	Responsibility
Introduction, Executive Summary, and Editor	Write the Executive Summary and Introduction. Suggest edits and revisions to other sections strictly for flow and cohesion. Edit and provide one of the three proposed plans.
Background and Related Research	Write the background and related research section. Edit and provide one of the three proposed plans (if relevant).
Analysis and Recommendation	Write the analysis and recommendation section. Edit and provide one of the three proposed plans (if relevant).
One Proposed Plan	Edit and provide on of the three proposed plans. Aid with finding and organizing background research for the background and analysis sections.

Teams should plan to meet to assign roles, sign the group role contract, and submit the signed contract on Brightspace by midnight on September 29th.

Presentation

As groups, you will prepare a 15-minute presentation of your final report. The presentation should be delivered via an unedited recording of a Zoom call with a shared screen for presenting slides. A good presentation should be polished, on time, and should provide a clear overview of 1) the nature of the problem you are facing and the priorities you carried into resolving it (guided by your research), 2) the three alternatives you considered, and 3) your analysis of their trade-offs and final recommendation.

You will turn in:

1. A .MP4 file of the recording (I recommend making a practice video to make sure you know how to download and save the recording as an .MP4)
2. A .PDF of your slides.

Reminder on good presentation basics:

- Introduce yourselves briefly at the beginning and give a brief purpose statement of the presentation.
- Make sure your slides are not overly wordy and provide complementary information that does not distract from your own words as you present
- Keep on time
- Practice a few times before the final run
- Make sure you have polished transitions between slides as a speaker and between speakers
- Remember you are summarizing in a presentation: not every detail or thought from the final paper needs to be in it

Peer Evaluation

Peer evaluations are due December 12th by Midnight. Instructions are provided on Brightspace.

Clients and Policy Problems

You will have 3 options to choose from as a group. On the first day of class (August 25th), you will find a brief survey in Brightspace that will ask about your general availability for group collaboration and your client/policy problem preference to work on for the semester. I will do my best to assemble groups based on both availability and client preference, but, of course, I cannot guarantee that everyone will have perfect alignment. Below, I provide a description of your three options for clients/policy issues and some basic background materials to get you started (all of these problems have a great deal of literature for review and related issues to research).

Re-purposing A Campus

The College of Saint Rose, in the Pine Hills neighborhood of Albany, New York, closed permanently in 2024. The campus features a variety of buildings, some relatively new and recently updated, that can be re-purposed. In light of the footprint even smaller colleges and smaller campuses have in their surrounding communities, ensuring the Saint Rose campus finds a new life is a top priority for Albany elected officials. The county purchased the campus in March of 2025.

Your team is to advise the county executive and mayor on how to manage and re-purpose the Saint Rose campus.

Status Quo: Minimal maintenance and security of the empty campus provided by the county government.

Background materials

-Coverage of the Purchase

-Background About the Campus

Funding Higher Education and Affordability

Higher education has long served a multitude of policy purposes: providing basic research that yields government and commercial applications, creating economic growth in their local communities, and providing pathways in the labor markets of varying industries to name just a few. In recent decades, the cost of higher education has been a rising policy problem confronting both parties. More recently, the Trump administration has also focused on federal funding streams to colleges and universities. You are working as part of a consultant team hired to provide your client of choice a recommendation for policy priorities regarding the future role of federal funding in higher education.

Background materials

To get an introduction to the problem, start with this set of background readings on recent trends in the federal role in higher education funding:

-Urban Institute

-National Council of State Legislatures

-USA Facts

Status Quo: The federal government’s current role in funding higher education.

Democratic party (if you choose this client):

-House Democrats’ Proposed Higher Education bill

-Center for American Progress Vision for Higher Education Policy

Republican party (if you choose this client):

-American Enterprise Institute Vision for Higher Education

-Summary Reporting on Higher Education portion of BBB

-Executive Order on Research Grants

-Nature Coverage of Executive Order

Note

Federal policy can be a little bit abstract and indirect. The tools available are often somewhat constrained. A lot of the challenge in this scenario will be defining clearly the policy objective in higher education you would like to focus on in your policy alternatives and designing them accordingly both when optimizing the client’s proposal and designing your own.

Revitalizing an Old Downtown

Recently, Governor Hochul announced the Championing Albany’s Potential (CAP) program and included a budgeted $200 million dollars in investments being made available for revitalizing downtown Albany. You have been appointed to lead a task force for developing proposals for how to best spend the money by identifying three proposed alternative plans. These can range from transit and transportation projects to business investments to housing and other redevelopment investments. There are some existing ideas, existing issues in the community, and existing priorities that you will want to consider and incorporate in each of your plans.

Note

The status quo for this scenario does not exist as a policy. Thus, there should be some description of the current state and issues in the targeted area in the background section, but there will need to be three new alternatives proposed rather than a description of the effects of the status quo.

Background materials

Information about the proposed grant can be found here:

Downtown Albany Strategy

To get a sense of the proposed stadium development, read these three articles. As a starting point for your research, you can find a review of research on stadium projects here

You do not need to feel bound to include the stadium proposal as an alternative. However, drawing on some of the aims it hopes to address might help inspire and fuel alternatives that you do consider.