Morton Owen Schapiro | |
---|---|
Born | July 13, 1953 (age 64) Newark, NJ |
Residence | Evanston, Illinois |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | B.S., Hofstra University Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania |
Known for | Higher education economics |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Economics |
Institutions |
Northwestern University Williams College University of Southern California |
Morton Owen Schapiro (born July 13, 1953) is an American economist and the current president of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Schapiro received a B.S. in economics from Hofstra University in 1975 and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979. He joined the economics faculty at Williams College in 1980 and departed to become the chair of the economics department at the University of Southern California in 1991, rising to become the dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences in 1994, and the vice president for planning in 1998. He was appointed as the 16th president of Williams College in 2000, a post he held until becoming president of Northwestern University in 2009. He began his term as the 16th president of Northwestern on September 1, 2009. He is also a professor of economics in Northwestern's Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and holds appointments in the J.L. Kellogg School of Management and the School of Education and Social Policy.
Schapiro is among the nation's leading authorities on the economics of higher education, with particular expertise in the area of college financing and affordability and on trends in educational costs and student aid. He has testified before the U. S. Senate and House committees on economic and educational issues and is widely quoted in national media on those issues.
Schapiro has authored more than 100 articles, and written or edited nine books including Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities" (with Gary Saul Morson, Princeton University Press 2017); The Student Aid Game: Meeting Need and Rewarding Talent in American Higher Education (with Michael McPherson, Princeton University Press 1998); Paying the Piper: Productivity, Incentives and Financing in Higher Education (with Michael McPherson and Gordon Winston, University of Michigan Press 1993); Keeping College Affordable: Government and Educational Opportunity (with Michael McPherson, The Brookings Institution 1991); and an edited volume, "The Fabulous Future? American and the World in 2040" (with Gary Saul Morson, Northwestern University Press 2015).
He has received research grants and contracts from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the World Bank, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the College Board, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and other groups to study the economics of higher education and related topics. In 2010 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2017 he was elected to the National Academy of Education.