Bridget Terry Long

Harvard University

Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Saris Professor of Education and Economics

Bridget Terry Long is a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and the Saris Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). A member of the HGSE faculty since 2000, Long is an economist whose work focuses on improving educational opportunity and student success, especially the transition from high school to higher education and beyond. Her studies have provided evidence on the effectiveness of financial aid policies, postsecondary remedial education, and college support programs on educational attainment. She has also developed and tested interventions that provide students with information and assistance to complete financial aid forms, save for college, and persist in higher education. Long served as Dean of HGSE from 2018 to 2024 and led the school through a major academic redesign, the COVID pandemic, and the creation of its first online master’s degree. She also increased the availability of student financial aid substantially with the success of a major fundraising initiative, and she expanded HGSE’s external engagement with practitioners, leaders, and communities around the world. She served as Academic Dean from 2013 to 2017 and Faculty Director of the Ed.D. and Ph.D. programs from 2010 to 2013. Long is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, and the International Academy of Education. She is the Chair of Board of Directors for MDRC, a nonprofit social policy research organization, a founding Board Member of Axim Collaborative, and a member of the Board for the Red Sox Foundation. During the Obama administration, she served as Chair of National Board for Education Sciences, the advisory panel of the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education. She has testified numerous times before U.S. Senate Committees and state governmental bodies, and she was a Visiting Fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Long was awarded the Peter H. Rossi Award for Contributions to the Theory or Practice of Program Evaluation from APPAM, the Spencer Foundation Mentor Award, and the Robert P. Huff Golden Quill Award for excellence in research and published works on student financial assistance. She has won numerous major research grants, including from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Long earned her Ph.D. and M.A. from the Harvard University Department of Economics and her A.B. from Princeton University in Economics with a Certificate in Afro-American Studies.