Economist Jordan Matsudaira, who researches the links between access to higher education and economic outcomes, will give a presentation on the vital issue of college affordability Oct. 22 at the University of Utah School of Business.

The U’s Marriner S. Eccles Institute for Economics and Quantitative Analysis hosts Matsudaira, a professor of public affairs at American University and former Deputy Under Secretary of Education in the Biden Administration, who will give a speech titled, “The Fight Over How Americans Should Pay for College,” at 12:30 pm in the Rick and Marian Warner Auditorium in the Robert H. and Kathryn B. Garff Building.

Matsudaira, who has previously held faculty appointments at Cornell and Columbia universities, conducts research that seeks to understand how economic outcomes for low-income Americans are shaped by education and labor market policies and institutions.
At the Department of Education, Matsudaira served as the agency’s first-ever chief economist and led a team that provided economic analysis and data analytics to guide higher education regulations and executive actions on institutional accountability and student debt relief.  He also served on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2015, where he worked with Marriner S. Eccles Institute Director Adam Looney to develop the College Scorecard, a data tool that provides college-specific information on student outcomes.
Matusdaira is now considered a leading policy expert on higher education, which is facing an affordability crisis even as a college degree is becoming increasingly critical in the job market.

“In recent decades, college has become more valuable, in that the average wages of college graduates have risen faster than for groups with less education,” Looney said. “But tuition and student loan balances have risen markedly as well. This presents a number of policy challenges around how to insure access to higher education, particularly for low-income Americans. Balancing access, affordability, and impact on the public coffers will require managing several difficult tradeoffs, and I expect this event will help us understand the choices we face as a nation.”