Marvin Lazerson

Marvin Lazerson is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. He received A.B. and M.A. degrees from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University. A distinguished historian of education, he served as President of the History of Education Society (U.S.). A widely-published scholar, during 1980s and 1990s, he served as dean of Penn’s Graduate School of Education and as the University’s Interim Provost. During these years, the School and the University achieved previously unprecedented scholarly, reputational and fiscal success. After serving as a university administrator, Professor Lazerson was named to the Howard and Judith Berkowitz Chair in Education. His interdisciplinary scholarship covers a broad number of areas, focuses on such issues as the purposes of educational institutions, the role of schooling in democratic societies, the relationships between labor markets and education, the improvement of teaching and learning in higher education, and the management of universities. He is especially interested in how public policies develop and the ways they are implemented and managed. His most recent books are: Higher Education and the American Dream (Central European University Press, 2010);The Education Gospel: the Economic Power of Schooling, with W. Norton Grubb (Harvard University Press, 2004, pb. edition 2007); and Institutions of Democracy: the Public Schools, with Susan Fuhrman (Oxford University Press, 2005, pb. edition 2006). Professor Lazerson is also recognized as a teacher and mentor. The students in the Graduate School of Education at Penn named him the School’s outstanding teacher. The Spencer Foundation awarded him a special ‘mentoring grant’ for his role in mentoring graduate students and junior faculty. He currently teaches in the Department of Public Policy at Central European University.