Financing Higher Education
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Nancy Schrom Dye Lecture Hall
Sandy Baum is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and a research professor at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development. Professor emerita of economics at Skidmore College, Baum earned a B.A. in sociology at Bryn Mawr College, where she is currently a member of the board of trustees, and her Ph.D. in economics at Columbia University. She has written and spoken extensively on issues relating to college access, college pricing, student aid policy, student debt, affordability, and other aspects of higher education finance.
Baum has coauthored the College Board’s annual publications Trends in Student Aid and Trends in College Pricing since 2002. She also coauthors Education Pays: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society. She chaired the College Board’s Rethinking Student Aid study group that issued comprehensive proposals for reform of the federal student aid system in 2008, and its Rethinking Pell Grants study group that issued recommendations in April 2013. She chaired a Brookings Institution study group that issued its report, Beyond Need and Merit: Strengthening State Grant Programs in May 2012.
Recent work includes studies of how behavioral economics can inform student aid policy; a meaningful definition of college affordability; and tuition and financial aid strategies for broad access public institutions. She is a member of the board of the National Student Clearinghouse.
Michael S. McPherson is the fifth president of the Spencer Foundation. Prior to joining the foundation in 2003 he served as president of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota for seven years.
A nationally known economist whose expertise focuses on the interplay between education and economics, McPherson spent the 22 years prior to his Macalester presidency as professor of economics, chair of the Economics Department, and dean of faculty at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He holds a B.A. in mathematics, an M.A. in economics, and a Ph.D. in economics, all from the University of Chicago.
McPherson is coauthor and editor of several books, including Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities; College Access: Opportunity or Privilege?; Keeping College Affordable; Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy. He was founding coeditor of the journal Economics and Philosophy. He has served as a trustee of the College Board, the American Council on Education, and Wesleyan University. He was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. McPherson is currently a trustee of McNally Smith College of Music and the DentaQuest Foundation, as well as president of the Board of Overseers of TIAA-CREF.
Daniel T. Madzelan is associate vice president for government relations with the American Council on Education (ACE), a national leadership and advocacy association for higher education. ACE represents more than 1,700 member institutions.
Madzelan joined ACE in 2014. In his role, he helps advance ACE’s advocacy on behalf of the higher education community, particularly the array of federal policies and issues critical to the missions of American colleges and universities and the students they serve.
From 2009–10, Madzelan served as acting assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the U.S. Department of Education, where he was charged with the primary responsibility for administering a $2.6 billion program budget that provided financial support to colleges and universities and their students. He also had policy and program budget responsibility for the Title IV student financial aid programs that provided nearly $130 billion in grant, loan, and federal work-study assistance to more than 14 million postsecondary students and their families. Previously, he was a longtime director of the forecasting and policy analysis service in the department’s office of postsecondary education. He worked in a number of capacities in that office before becoming a director.
Madzelan is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, with a Bachelor of Arts in economics with a concentration in mathematics and statistics.
