Higher Education Policy

Krista M. Soria

Institutional Research, Assessment, and Policy Analysis and Office for Student Affairs, University of Idaho

Dr. Krista M. Soria (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Leadership and Counseling at the University of Idaho. She is a critical quantitative researcher seeking to investigate the most equitable and inclusive programmatic practices and institutional conditions to prepare students to engage in the complexities of social change. She examines how higher education institutions can create a more supportive campus climate for students from diverse backgrounds, whether programs are equitably accessible and beneficial to all students, and how we can create structural conditions to support...

Steven G. Brint

SERU Principal Researcher; Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, University of California, Riverside
Sociology and Public Policy, University of California, Riverside

Steven Brint is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside, Director of the Colleges & Universities 2000 Project, and a Principal Researcher in the SERU Consortium.

Brint is an organizational sociologist whose research focuses on topics in the sociology of higher education, the sociology of professions, and middle-class politics. His studies of higher education have been funded for two decades by the National Science Foundation and two philanthropies. He is the author of four books: The Diverted Dream (with Jerome Karabel) (...

David Bodovski

Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Yale University Tobin Center

David Bodovski is a Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow working under Dr. Zachary Bleemer in the Yale School of Management. He holds a B.S. in mathematics and economics and an M.A. in economics from Penn State University. His current research includes studying the relative roles of signaling and human capital on the returns to college degrees, the effects of education on political socialization, and the impacts of unionization at universities on enrollment and student outcomes.

Tolani Britton

Assistant Professor - Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley

Tolani Britton uses quasi-experimental methods to explore the impact of policies on students’ transition from secondary school to higher education, as well as access and retention in higher education. Recent work explores whether the disproportionate increase in incarceration of Black males for drug possessions and manufacture increased gaps in college enrollment rates by race and gender over two time periods- after the passage of the Anti-Drug Act from 1986 - 1993 and after the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act from 1995 - 2000.

Prior to earning her...

Marijk Van der Wende

Professor of Higher Education, Utrecht University

Marijk van der Wende is Distinguished Faculty Professor of Higher Education at Utrecht University’s Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance. Her research focuses on the impact of globalization and internationalization on higher education systems, institutions, curricula, and teaching and learning arrangements.

She is also Guest Professor and member of the International Advisory Board of the Graduate School of Education Shanghai Jiao Tong University, a member of...

Laura Hamilton

Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of California-Merced

Laura Hamilton is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced, and co-founder of the Higher Education, Race, & the Economy (or HERE) Lab. Her award-winning books include: Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality, Parenting to a Degree: How Family Matters for College Women’s Success, and most recently Broke: The Racial Consequences of Underfunding Public Universities. Her work examines the ways in which postsecondary organizations and higher education funding structures work to create and maintain racial and class inequities.

Amal Kumar

CSHE Research Associate and ROPS Editor; Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration at the California State University, Sacramento

Amal Kumar is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration at the California State University, Sacramento. His teaching and research explore the evolving relationships between public higher education and its institutional, political, and social contexts through rigorous interdisciplinary engagement between organizational theory, public policy, and history. Current interests include policy intermediaries, educational innovation and entrepreneurship, and equity in the American professoriate. His work has been published in Higher Education, CSHE’s ...

Charlie Eaton

Assistant Professor, Sociology, UC Merced

Eaton's research investigates the role of organizations in the interplay between economic elites and disadvantaged social groups. His work asks what forms of organization strengthen elite efforts to consolidate power in politics and the economy? Alternatively, what are effective organizational structures and strategies by which non-elites can achieve more equitable distributions of power, wealth, and status?

Eaton's primary current project asks how the rising power and wealth of finance has contributed to rising inequality in America since the 1980s. The project particularly...

Zach Bleemer

Assistant Professor of Economics, Princeton University

Zach Bleemer is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Princeton University in the Industrial Relations Section. He is also a research associate of Opportunity Insights and the Center for Studies in Higher Education, where he directs the UC ClioMetric History Project

The...

Marc Torka

Research associate, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney (Australia) and WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Marc is a sociologist of higher education, science and the profession. His general interest is how, if at all, institutional changes impact on the practice of academic and professional work. His current research project 'International comparison of doctoral training practices' compares practices of doctoral research and supervision in the social sciences and physics within the German chair, Australian lecturer and US graduate school system.

Marc is currently visiting scholar at the Center of Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at UC Berkeley, research associate at the Department of...