Reflections on 50 years in Higher Education Larry Leslie Larry Leslie is distinguished visiting professor and senior scholar at the Institute of Higher Education and professor emeritus of higher education at the University of Arizona. He was director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona for over 13 years. He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading experts in higher education finance and policy. Much of his work addresses the social investment and economic value of higher education and the economic benefits of applied market models. Future Research for the Field of Higher Education Steve DesJardins Stephen L. DesJardins is professor in both the School of Education and Ford School of Public Policy at University of Michigan. He teaches courses related to public policy in higher education, economics and finances in postsecondary education, statistical methods, and institutional research and policy analysis. His research interests include student transitions from high school to college, what happens to students once they enroll in college, the economics of postsecondary education, and applying new statistical techniques to the study of these issues. Current projects are: examining what factors are related to student loan default; how the courses students take in high school affect subsequent educational outcomes; and a number of evaluations of the effects of state policies on higher education outcomes. His research has been published widely in education and economics journals. He is also on the editorial board of Economics of Education Review, is a contributing editor to Research in Higher Education, and is the methodology section editor for Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research. Invisible Walls and Class Ceilings: Deconstructing Academic Tracking in Higher Education Amy Stich As a sociologist of education and qualitative researcher, Amy Stich is interested in issues of inequality of educational access, opportunity, and outcome relative to social class and race. Her current research, supported by a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, examines the structure and social consequences of postsecondary tracking. Stich has published widely in academic journals including Sociology of Education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, American Educational Research Journal, Urban Education, and Review of Educational Research. She is the author of Access to Inequality: Reconsidering Class, Knowledge, and Capital in Higher Education (Lexington Books) and the co-editor of The Working Classes and Higher Education: Inequality of Access, Opportunity, and Outcome (Routledge). Stich received her PhD in Sociology of Education from the University at Buffalo where she was also a postdoctoral research associate on a longitudinal ethnographic study of student transitions from high school to college, supported by the National Science Foundation. Prior to joining the Institute of Higher Education, Stich was an assistant professor in the Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology, and Foundations at Northern Illinois University.
