Economist Tim Sass Ranks Among Top Education Scholars

ATLANTA — Georgia State University economist Tim Sass ranks among the nation’s top education scholars, according to the 2023 Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings published Monday in Education Week by blogger Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

More than 20,000 university-based faculty examine educational questions in the U.S., according to the AEI. Sass was ranked No. 153, among the top 1 percent.

The annual ranking exercise recognizes the top 200 university-affiliated scholars — of any discipline — who focus primarily on educational questions. Their influence is calculated using nine metrics, including Google Scholar score, Amazon book points and rankings, OpenSyllabusProject.org scores, Congressional Record mentions, education press and web mentions, and Twitter scores.

Sass is a Distinguished University Professor in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. He holds the W.J. Usery Chair of the American Workplace and is faculty director of the Metro Atlanta Policy Lab for Education in the Georgia Policy Labs. An applied micro-economist whose research focuses on the economics of education, his areas of interest include teacher labor supply, the measurement of teacher quality and school choice.

The Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings were created in 2010 to recognize scholars who work to move ideas into practice and policy. They are a data-informed effort to spur discussion about the nature of responsible public engagement — who's doing a good job, how much these things matter and how to gauge a scholar’s contribution.

“The academy today does a passable job of recognizing good disciplinary scholarship, but a pretty mediocre job of recognizing scholars who work to move ideas from the pages of barely read journals to practice and policy,” Hess said. “The rankings serve as one small way to encourage academics to step into the fray and revisit academic norms by doing more to recognize and value those scholars who do step out.”

Find the rankings and more information here.