Michael Bastedo is a professor in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan, where he is also Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Affairs in the Marsal Family School of Education, and affiliated faculty in Organizational Studies, Engineering Education, the Educational Policy Initiative, and the International Institute. He is the founding director of the Michigan Admissions Collaboratory, a practice-to-research center designed to facilitate and promote college admissions research both in the U.S. and internationally. Professor Bastedo was awarded the 2013 Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association, for distinguished contribution to education research in the first decade after the Ph.D. He was the first scholar of higher education to win this award in its 30-year history. He was named an AERA Fellow in 2021, highlighting a distinguished and sustained career of research in the field. In 2023, he was elected to the National Academy of Education. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in the Netherlands, a Ford Foundation Global Policy Fellow at the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a policy fellow at the Bellagio Center in Italy, and a visiting scholar at Stanford and the Center de Sociologie des Organisations at the Institut d’Études Politiques (SciencesPo). His scholarly interests are in the governance, politics, and organization of public higher education, with particular interests in college admissions, inequality, and rankings. His recent books are Rethinking College Admissions (Harvard Education Press), American Higher Education in the 21st Century (5th edition) and The Organization of Higher Education: Managing Colleges for a New Era (both Johns Hopkins University Press). His work has been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Research in Higher Education, The Review of Higher Education, Higher Education, and The Journal of Higher Education. He is an associate editor of the American Educational Research Journal, and has served as a member of the editorial boards of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Research in Higher Education, and The Journal of Higher Education, and reviews for major grant competitions such as NSF, FIPSE and GEAR UP. His research has been reported by journalists at National Public Radio, The New York Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker, U.S. News & World Report, Nature, The Economist, The Times of London, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among many others. Professor Bastedo has been supported through research grants and fellowships provided by the National Science Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Mellon Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Spencer Foundation, The Lumina Foundation, The Kauffman Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities, The Association for Institutional Research, The Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), The National Center for Education Statistics, The European Commission, and The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Prior to entering the academic profession, Professor Bastedo held policy positions with the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, and research positions in the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement and the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research. He holds the A.B. with honors from Oberlin College, an M.A. with distinction from Boston College, and the A.M. in Sociology and Ph.D. in Administration and Policy Analysis from Stanford University.