“Democracy is Built on Data”: For Research Fellow Ethan Kozlowski, Data Analysis is a Public Service

*Ethan Kozlowski with his family at graduation*.

Contemplating his family tree, Campaign Research Fellow Ethan Kozlowski sees “a strong history of higher education and also public service.” His grandmother was a teacher and librarian, his grandfather a teacher and police officer. His mother recently retired from a career as a nurse practitioner, and his siblings work as a public defender and high school teacher, respectively.

Although Ethan always planned to attend college, he wasn’t sure what academic and career path he would take until he saw how, in our current era, working with data can be a form of public service. He double majored in statistics and sociology at the University of Virginia before earning his MA in Computational Social Science from the University of Chicago.

“Democracy is built on data,” Ethan says. “Without transparent, valid data, policy is nothing. How can we determine where to allocate finite state resources if we do not have reliable and accurate data to guide our decisions? The founding fathers explicitly included a decennial census in the constitution in a similar purpose.”

His passionate worldview makes him the right person to work on the Campaign’s flagship series, the State of Higher Education, a collection of reports that dive into disaggregated data to determine how California’s higher education systems are serving Black, Asian American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and Latinx students, respectively. Each report highlights successes, offers recommendations for addressing ongoing challenges, and considers how outcomes differ for subgroups (for example, East Asian students vs. Pacific Islander students).

In keeping with the Campaign’s commitment to economic justice, this year’s State of Higher Education reports also include data related to economic mobility and return on investment; i.e. will investing in higher education pay off in the workforce? The short answer is yes, but significant wage gaps exist for racially minoritized graduates.

Despite persistent inequalities, Ethan recognized several noteworthy findings in the data he has analyzed, most recently for the State of Higher Education for Latinx Californians, to be published in the fall as part of this year’s State of Higher Education series.

“It is meaningful to see that public institutions deliver consistently good returns for students regardless of Latinx enrollment concentration; the same cannot be said of the private sector,” Ethan says. “This pattern prevails when grouping by other races/ethnicities as well.”

The biggest challenge in his work? “There are over a hundred California Community Colleges, around two dozen Cal States, and nine (undergrad) UCs. They all have different ways to track their data.”

The meticulousness required to extract and analyze data from across multiple systems is one reason the Campaign relies on fellows to assist our Research team. Our fellowship program also helps nurture a new generation of researchers at a time when academic fellowship opportunities are decreasing.

In addition to learning more about California’s higher education systems, Ethan is doing field research as a new resident of Los Angeles. He reports, “Coming from Chicago, I’d say it’s still tough deciding on which city has the better food scene. But when it comes to sushi or Korean food, LA is superior, no contest.”

To support the Campaign’s Steve Weiner and David Wolf Founder Fellowship Program, please consider donating at https://collegecampaign.org/donate.