Higher Education Policy

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...

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 ...

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.

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...

Huijie Zhang

Institute of Educational Assessment, and Department of Education Management, Faculty of Education, East China Normal University (ECNU) , China

EDUCATION: Ph.D., Education Management, 2013, East China Normal University. (Shanghai); M.Ed, Higher Education, 2004, Xi’an Jiao Tong University. (Shanxi Province);

B. S., Mathematics Education, 2001, Xin Yang Teacher College. (Henan Province)

PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT: 2014- Lecturer, Associate professor, Institute of Educational Assessment, Faculty of Education, East China Normal University; 2004 - 2014 Assistant, Lecturer, Higher Education Research Center, Shandong University.

Social Service: 2006 - 2014 Team member, Shandong Higher Education Evaluation Center,...

David P. Earwicker, Ph.D.

David Earwicker is Principal and Founder of Aspen Insight Consulting, a higher education research development firm. He holds a PhD in Education Policy from the University of California, Davis, an M.A. in Middle East Affairs/Islamic Culture Studies from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from UC Davis.

During 2022-23 he is a Visiting Scholar with the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. At CSHE, under the sponsorship of John Aubrey Douglass, his research work is...

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...

Michele Meoli

Associate Professor, Department of Management, Information and Production Engineering, University of Bergamo

Michele Meoli is Associate Professor of Finance at the Department of Management, Information and Production Engineering, University of Bergamo, and Deputy Director of the CISAlpino Institute for Comparative Studies in Europe (CCSE), University of Bergamo and University of Augsburg, where he coordinates the Research Group on Higher Education. He was Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Centre for Econometrics Analysis, Cass Business School (City University, London). His research interests include Corporate Governance, Corporate Finance, Academic entrepreneurship, Higher Education and Science...