Morton Schapiro
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Morton Owen Schapiro (born July 13, 1953) is an American economist and the former president of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Before assuming the Northwestern presidency in 2009, he served as president of Williams College for nine years. Earlier, Schapiro was Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Southern California. In March 2021, Schapiro announced that he would step down as president of Northwestern University in the following year.


Early life

After a childhood spent in New Jersey, Schapiro received a B.S. ''magna cum laude'' in economics from
Hofstra University Hofstra University is a private university in Hempstead, New York. It is Long Island's largest private university. Hofstra originated in 1935 as an extension of New York University (NYU) under the name Nassau College – Hofstra Memorial of Ne ...
, where he studied with
Herman A. Berliner Herman Albert Berliner (born April 6, 1944) was the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs of Hofstra University. He was appointed provost of Hofstra University in 1990 and served as Provost for 28 years in total. He also served ...
, in 1975 and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979. At Penn, he was research assistant to Richard Easterlin.


Career

After teaching at Penn for a year, where he received a Distinguished Teaching Award in 1978, Schapiro joined the economics faculty at Williams College in 1980, where he additionally served as assistant provost from 1986 to 1989. He left Williams to become the chair of the economics department at the University of Southern California in 1991, rising to become the dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences in 1994, and the vice president for planning in 1998. He was appointed as the 16th president of Williams College in 2000, a post he held until becoming president of Northwestern University in 2009. During Schapiro's tenure as Williams president, the college eliminated student loans in favor of grants for low-income students, tripled its number of tutorial courses offered, and increased diversity, with numbers of students of color rising by about eight percentage points, from about 25 to 33 percent of the total student body. He began his term as the 16th president of Northwestern on September 1, 2009. He is also a professor of economics in Northwestern's Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and holds appointments in the J.L. Kellogg School of Management and the School of Education and Social Policy. Schapiro is scheduled to end his tenure as Northwestern's president on August 31, 2022. Schapiro has thanked the "illustrious" faculty, students, staff , trustees and alumni and cited his accomplishments, including the university's rise in college rankings. Schapiro has served as a trustee of Hillel International, and also a director of Marsh & McLennan.


Research

Schapiro is among the nation's leading authorities on the economics of higher education, with particular expertise in the area of college financing and affordability and on trends in educational costs and student aid. He has testified before the U. S. Senate and House committees on economic and educational issues and is widely quoted in national media on those issues. Schapiro has authored more than 100 articles, and written or edited nine books including ''Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities" (with Gary Saul Morson, Princeton University Press 2017); ''The Student Aid Game: Meeting Need and Rewarding Talent in American Higher Education'' (with Michael McPherson, Princeton University Press 1998); ''Paying the Piper: Productivity, Incentives and Financing in Higher Education'' (with Michael McPherson and Gordon Winston, University of Michigan Press 1993); ''Keeping College Affordable: Government and Educational Opportunity'' (with Michael McPherson, The Brookings Institution 1991); and an edited volume, "The Fabulous Future? American and the World in 2040" (with Gary Saul Morson, Northwestern University Press 2015). Schapiro has received research grants and contracts from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the World Bank, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the College Board, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and other groups to study the economics of higher education and related topics. In 2010 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2017 he was elected to the National Academy of Education.


Awards

A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Schapiro has received honorary degrees from
Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...
(2001, where he delivered the Class Day address), Hofstra (2006), Wesleyan University (LLD, 2008), University of Notre Dame (2013), and Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary (2013, where he delivered the commencement oration). He is additionally an honorary fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.


Books

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schapiro, Morton O. Presidents of Northwestern University Presidents of Williams College Hofstra University alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni Williams College faculty University of Southern California faculty Living people 1953 births American economists Educational administrators Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences