Speaker biographies

Sandy Baum is a professor of economics at Skidmore College and a senior policy analyst at the College Board. She has written extensively on issues relating to college access, college pricing, student-aid policy, student debt, affordability, and other aspects of higher education finance. Dr. Baum is the coauthor of Trends in Student Aid and Trends in College Pricing, and Education Pays: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society, published by the College Board in 2004. Other recent work includes studies of the role of gender in college admissions and setting benchmarks for manageable student debt levels. Dr. Baum has served as a consulting economist to the College Board’s Financial Aid Standards and Services Advisory Committee since 1988 and has worked with a variety of other higher education organizations in addition to individual colleges and universities.

Alan Bersin was appointed California’s secretary of education on July 1, 2005, by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Immediately prior to his appointment by the governor, he was superintendent of public education in San Diego City Schools, the nation’s eighth-largest urban school district. Prior to becoming superintendent in 1998, Mr. Bersin served as the United States attorney for the Southern District of California for nearly five years. In a related capacity statewide, Mr. Bersin served between 2000–03 as a member of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, and was selected by his colleagues as chairman of the commission in December 2000 for a two-year term. Mr. Bersin serves as a member of the policy board of EdVoice and of the Broad Institute for Superintendents, as a member of the Board of Overseers for Harvard University, and as a member of the visiting committee for the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Don Betterton retired as the director of financial aid at Princeton University for thirty years in June 2006. He has recently started a business, Betterton College Planning, which gives individuals and groups advice on effective preparation for college, combining both admission and financial planning. While Mr. Betterton was at Princeton, he was the architect of many significant financial aid initiatives, most notably the “no loan” program, in which undergraduates are not required to borrow. During his Princeton tenure, Mr. Betterton was widely regarded as a national leader in his profession. Among his many accomplishments and honors include serving as a trustee of the College Board, chairing the policy committee of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, and being elected to the College Scholarship Service Hall of Fame. As an expert on enrollment management, Mr. Betterton has been a consultant to more than thirty colleges.

Patrick M. Callan is president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. He has previously served as executive director of the California Higher Education Policy Center, the California Postsecondary Education Commission, the Washington State Council for Postsecondary Education, and the Montana Commission on Postsecondary Education, and as vice president of the Education Commission of the States. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that addresses state and federal policy issues. It receives financial support from national foundations including The Atlantic Philanthropies, The Pew charitable Trusts, and The Ford Foundation.

Richard Lee Colvin is director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University. Before joining the institute, he was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where he wrote principally about state and national education policy issues and won a number of national awards. He also wrote about education for two other newspapers and has contributed to a number of education publications. He was a 2000–01 Michigan Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan.

Christopher G. Cronk established the Education Finance Group within Banc of America Securities in October 2000. He is responsible for coordinating all education-loan–related activities for the Public Finance Department, which has included the lead managed placement of over $18 billion of student-loan securities. Prior to working in the Education Finance Group, Mr. Cronk worked in the Structured Finance Group of Banc of America Securities. Beginning in October 1994, he engaged in securitization transactions involving a broad range of asset types, including, primarily, federal and private student loans, but also Visa/MasterCard receivables, private label credit card receivables, marine/RV receivables, trade receivables, construction equipment loans, A/B/C/D mortgage loans, consumer installment loans, and government receivables. Such securitization transactions involved structuring facilities for ABCP Multi-Seller conduits, the private/144a markets, and the public capital markets. Prior to joining Banc of America Securities, Mr. Cronk worked for Citibank’s Frankfurt-based Asset-Backed group.

Sarah Ducich is vice president for public policy for Sallie Mae. She joined Sallie Mae in August 1998 and is responsible for the development and advancement of the company’s policy goals regarding the federal student-loan programs, with a particular emphasis on the effect of federal budget policy on the such programs. Prior to joining Sallie Mae, Ms. Ducich consulted on federal budget policy for several national firms, was deputy budget director with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1990–93, was a senior staff member of the Senate Budget Committee, from 1987–90, and was a budget examiner with the Office of Management and Budget from 1984–87.

Richard George is an executive with Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation, a national leader in the student-loan industry, providing services to borrowers, lenders, schools, and guaranty agencies. He previously served as a director of the National Council of Higher Education Loans Programs; as a director and chairman of the Finance and Audit Committee of the Board of Directors of the National Student Clearinghouse; and as a designee of the U.S. Comptroller General and the U.S. Secretary of Education to the study group for the Study of the Feasibility of Alternative Financial Instruments for Determining Lender Yields. He has also consulted on postsecondary educational finance for the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation subsidiary.

Alan Greenblatt is a writer for Governing magazine. He has been writing about politics and government in Washington and the states for more than a decade. As a reporter at Congressional Quarterly, he won the National Press Club's Sandy Hume award for political journalism. Since joining the staff of Governing, he has covered issues of concern to state and local governments, including budgets, taxes, and higher education. He has written about politics and culture for numerous publications, including the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle.

William D. Hansen is one of the founding partners of Chartwell Education Corporation. Prior to this, Mr. Hansen served as the deputy secretary of education on May 24, 2001. In this post, Hansen served as the Department of Education's (ED) chief operating officer and the principal adviser to Secretary Rod Paige on programs, policies, management, and budget matters. From 1993 until his appointment as deputy secretary, Mr. Hansen served as the president and chief executive officer of the Education Finance Council, which works to expand educational opportunities for students to pursue their dreams of a postsecondary education. An eleven-year Department of Education veteran, Hansen came to the ED in 1981 as a legislative assistant. He later served as acting deputy under secretary for planning, budget, and evaluation. From 1991–93, he was the assistant secretary for management and budget and the chief financial officer.

Terry W. Hartle is the senior vice president of government and public affairs at the American Council on Education (ACE). At ACE, he has directed the comprehensive effort to engage federal policymakers on a broad range of issues, including student aid, scientific research, government regulation, and tax policy. Prior to joining the council in 1993, he served for six years as education staff director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, then chaired by Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Prior to 1987, Mr. Hartle was director of social policy studies and a resident fellow at AEI, and a research scientist at the Educational Testing Service. He has authored or coauthored numerous articles, books, and national studies, and contributes regular book reviews to the Christian Science Monitor.

Arthur M. Hauptman has been an independent public policy consultant specializing in higher education finance issues since 1981. He is an internationally recognized expert who has written or edited a number of volumes as well as many chapters and articles on issues relating to student financial aid, student loans, fee-setting practices, and the public funding of institutions in the United States. and around the world. In the United States, he has consulted with a number of federal and state agencies as well as higher education associations and institutions. Over the past decade he has consulted with the governments or funding bodies of more than a dozen industrialized and developing countries in order to develop financing strategies for tertiary education, and has participated and made presentations at a number of international conferences.

John A. Hupalo is the executive vice president of Group Head Capital Markets at First Marblehead Corporation. He joined First Marblehead in March 2003 to manage its Capital Markets Group, which is responsible for financing the company’s asset acquisitions, risk management, and trust administration. He has been involved in student-loan finance since 1987. Prior to joining First Marblehead, Mr. Hupalo worked as an investment banker specializing exclusively in the student- loan sector. From 1999 to March 2003, he was a managing director in the Education Loan Group at UBS PaineWebber, and prior to that he worked at Salomon Smith Barney and Manufacturers Hanover Securities Corporation. Throughout his sixteen-year investment-banking career, he focused exclusively on student-loan finance. He was the first to structure Net Interest Margin financing for a student-loan issuer, and he developed numerous private loan programs for issuers throughout the country.

Joseph Keeney is the founder and chief executive officer of School Choice Investments, a private company that advises and invests in education organizations and companies that create new ways for students to learn, achieve, and succeed in a hypercompetitive global education environment. Mr. Keeney was most recently the president of Edison Charter Schools. His responsibilities at Edison included school operations, client development, finance, and real estate design and construction. From 1995–97, he was president and chief operating officer of the GJM division of Warnaco Group Inc., where he was responsible for worldwide sales, design, and finance.

Bridget Terry Long is associate professor of education and economics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is a recipient of the American Educational Research Association Dissertation Award and a National Science Foundation Graduate Studies Fellowship. Dr. Long is a faculty research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and has received research grants from the Spencer Foundation, Lumina Foundation for Education, and National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. She was awarded the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2002–04. In July 2005, The Chronicle of Higher Education featured her as one of eleven scholars profiled in an article entitled “New Voices: A Look at the New Generation of Higher-Education Thinkers.”

Christopher Mazzeo was formerly a senior policy analyst in the education division at the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices. At NGA, Mr. Mazzeo worked on educator quality, school improvement, and higher education. He is the author of Improving Teaching and Learning by Improving School Leadership and coauthor of Reaching New Heights: Turning Around Low-Performing Schools—A Guide for Governors.

Catherine B. Reynolds, chairman and chief executive officer of EduCap Inc., is one of America’s leading entrepreneurs and philanthropists. A bold, innovative financier, Mrs. Reynolds created a new and affordable way for families to pay for a college education. Her privately funded alternatives to government student loans have helped millions of Americans attend the college of their choice. In only one decade, her approach revolutionized student lending. Loan to Learn, Mrs. Reynolds’s latest student-loan program, sets the standard for the new multibillion-dollar private-education financing industry. Mrs. Reynolds is the first self-made woman to make Business Week’s list of the fifty most philanthropic living Americans.

Andrew Rudalevige is an associate professor of political science at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He also teaches in the college’s law and policy program. During the 2004–05 academic year, Mr. Rudalevige was a visiting research scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His first book, Managing the President’s Program: Presidential Leadership and Legislative Policy, was awarded the American Political Science Association’s Neustadt Prize as best book on the presidency published in 2002. His latest book is entitled The New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power after Watergate.

John R. Thelin has been a research professor in the Education Policy Studies School at the University of Kentucky since 2000. His teaching and research interests focus on the history of higher education and public policy. His latest book is A History of American Higher Education, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. In 1999–2000 Mr. Thelin served as president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. He is has written six books, writes articles and book reviews, and reviews manuscripts for such journals as The Review of Higher Education, Journal of Higher Education, History of Education Quarterly, Academe, and Change. His chapters on higher education topics have been published in The Encyclopedia of American Social History, The Encyclopedia of Educational Research, and The Encyclopedia of Higher Education. He has had essays published in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and in 2000 was guest columnist on higher education for the Lexington Herald-Leader (Kentucky). He has been a consultant to the National Science Foundation and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
 
Joseph Williams, a New York City-based journalist, is a senior fellow with Education Sector. Previously, he wrote about education issues for the New York Daily News and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Mr. Williams has won numerous state, local, and national awards for reporting on Milwaukee's private school choice program in the 1990s, and recently published the book Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

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