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Higher Education

Donald Heller

Donald E. Heller

heller_sml.jpg
Associate Professor of Education, Higher Education Program
Senior Research Associate, Center for the Study of Higher Education

400 Rackley Building
University Park, PA 16802-3203
Email: dheller@psu.edu
Home page: http://www.personal.psu.edu/deh29
Phone: 814-865-9756
Fax: 814-865-3638

Introduction

Dr. Heller recently came to Penn State from the University of Michigan where he earned a national reputation for his studies of higher education finance, tuition pricing, financial aid, and student access. Before his academic career, he spent a decade as an information technology manager at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Heller's research has been published in The Journal of Higher Education, The Review of Higher Education, The Journal of Student Financial Aid, and The Review of African American Education. He received the 2002 Promising Scholar/Early Career Achievement Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education, a scholarly society with 1,400 members dedicated to higher education as a field of study. He was also the 2001 recipient of the Robert P. Huff Golden Quill Award from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, for his contributions to the literature on student financial aid.

Areas of Expertise

  • Higher education economics, public policy, and finance, as well as academic and administrative uses of technology in higher education
  • Access and choice in postsecondary education, examining the factors and policies that help to determine whether or not individuals attend college, and what type of institution they attend

Publications (Full CV available here)

See a complete list here

Professional Experience & Activities

  • Consulting the following organizations:
    • American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan
    • EdFund of California (with JBL Associates and SRI International)
    • Colorado Commission on Higher Education (with Northwest Education Research Center)
    • Tennessee Council on Excellence in Higher Education
    • National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education
    • Massachusetts Higher Education Coordinating Council (now called the Board of Higher Education)
    • The California Higher Education Policy Center
    • University System of New Hampshire (with Cambridge Decision Dynamics)
    • California State University System (with Cambridge Decision Dynamics)
  • Editor of The States and Public Higher Education Policy: Affordability, Access, and Accountability (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001)
  • Editor of Condition of Access: Higher Education for Lower Income Students (ACE/Praeger Series in Higher Education, 2002)

Honors & Awards

  • Recipient of the Promising Scholar/Early Career Achievement Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Sacramento, CA, November 2002
  • Invited participant, Salzburg Seminar Universities Project Symposium, Salzburg, Austria, September 2002
  • Recipient of the Robert P. Huff Golden Quill Award (for contributions to the literature on student financial aid) from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, Washington, DC, July 2001
  • Selected as an Associate of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, San Jose, CA, February 2000
  • Recipient of the Edward J. Meade Fellowship in Educational Policy, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA, September 1996 9/96
  • Recipient of the M.R. Houston Prize Scholarship in Economics, Tufts University, Medford, MA, May 1981

Education

  • Ed.D., Higher Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1997
  • Ed.M., Administration, Planning, and Social Policy, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1992
  • B.A., Economics and Political Science, magna cum laude, Tufts University, 1981