Sie Won Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Texas Tech University. Dr. Kim’s research interests include evaluating policies promoting access to community colleges, the impact of immigration policies on U.S. higher education, and peer effects at Texas public universities. He is currently working on a research project examining the share of international students and enrollment decisions of domestic and foreign students during the COVID-19 pandemic. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis and his bachelor’s degree in Economics from Cornell University.
Research Affiliate - Economics
Dick Startz
Dick Startz is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and professor emeritus at the University of Washington (where he served as department chair and as a divisional dean). Professor Startz has published empirical work on a wide range of topics as well as making a number of contributions to econometric methodology. His work in education has seen two main outlets. The first is his book, Profit of Education (Praeger 2010), which builds the economic case for higher teacher salaries. The second main outlet blogging about education at the Brookings Institution Brown Center Chalkboard and his blog www.ProfitOfEducation.org, which has been described as “Freakonomics for the economics of schooling.” The roughly 500 posts are split between original, short data-driven analyses of topics in the economics of education and reviews of research findings from the academic literature. In addition to his work on the economics of education, Professor Startz is the coauthor of a macroeconomics text which has been translated into 8 languages, several books on personal computing, and many academic journal articles. More information can be found at http://startz.weebly.com/
Daniel A. Collier
Dr. Daniel A. Collier is an Assistant Professor of Higher and Adult Education in the Department of Leadership at the University of Memphis. Dan is also a research fellow for Davidson College’s The College Crisis Initiative (C2i) and the UCI Law School at the University of California – Irvine via the Student Loan Law Initiative (SLLI).
Before joining the University of Memphis, Dr. Collier was a research associate at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research – where he researched the Kalamazoo Promise, a place-based tuition-free higher education policy. Dan also previously served as the Director of Research for the $1.8m campus initiative at Western Michigan University title “Success at WMU” – conducting a combination of descriptive and causal analyses. Dr. Collier is particularly interested in implementing random assignment protocols or research that employs Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).
Dr. Collier’s research agenda is focused on three primary areas: Student Loan Debt & Income-Driven Repayment, Tuition-Free Policy, and Student Non-Cognitive Attributes & Basic Needs. Dan’s recent work can be found in Research in Higher Education, Higher Education Research and Development, The Journal of College Student Development, The Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, and the Journal of Student Financial Aid. Furthermore, several policy briefs and short papers can be read at The Third Way and W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Finally, Dr. Collier has been a go-to resource for media outlets like the Detroit Free Press, Inside Higher Education, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Money, Yahoo Finance, and CNBC.
Riley Acton
Riley Acton is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Farmer School of Business at Miami University who specializes in the economics of education. Her current areas of interest include the causes and consequences of decisions made by higher education institutions, the effect of local labor market shocks on K-12 and college students, and the impact of school finance policies on educational outcomes. Her work has been published in scholarly outlets such as the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Health Economics, and Education Finance & Policy, and has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Acton received her bachelor’s degree in Economics and Mathematics from Ursinus College in 2015 and her Ph.D. in Economics from Michigan State University in 2020.
