Dr. Rodney Hughes is an assistant professor of higher education administration at West Virginia University and director of the Center for the Future of Land-Grant Education. His areas of research include higher education institutional research, students’ college-going pathways, and education policy, with a particular interest in the characteristics of colleges and universities and their relevance to each area (how different colleges and universities approach decisions differently, how students choose where to enroll based on institutional characteristics, and how policy decisions affect different kinds of institutions). While a graduate student, he served as a student on the Board of Trustees of The Pennsylvania University immediately prior to the explosion of the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal, and this experience has informed ongoing research in the areas of Title IX and institutions’ responses to allegations of misconduct.

Dr. Hughes’ research has appeared in The Review of Higher Education, Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, Educational Policy, and The Journal of Education Finance, and his research has received media coverage in Forbes and The Hechinger Report. He holds B.S. and M.A. degrees in economics and a Ph.D. in higher education administration from Penn State University, and prior to joining West Virginia University, he was a research manager in the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University.