Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and an internationally recognized authority on the economics of education. His research has profoundly influenced education policy in both developed and developing countries. In 2021, he received the Yidan Prize for Education Research, the world’s most prestigous award in the field.
Hanushek’s scholarship—more than 300 widely cited articles and 26 books—spans topics such as class size reduction, school accountability, teacher effectiveness, and the economic returns to education. He pioneered the measurement of teacher quality through student achievement growth, a framework that underpins today’s value-added approaches to evaluating teachers and schools. His books include The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth, which links national economic growth to the skills of the population; Universal Basic Skills: What Countries Stand to Gain, which estimates the global economic benefits of achieving foundational skills; and Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses, which examines how school finance policy can support improved outcomes. His earlier works—ranging from Endangering Prosperity to the multi-volume Handbook of the Economics of Education—have set the standard for rigorous analysis of education systems worldwide.
He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, area coordinator for Economics of Education at CESifo, and a research fellow of the IZA Institute of Labor Economics. His public service includes roles as a commissioner on the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission, chair of the National Board for Education Sciences (2008–2010), Deputy Director of the Congressional Budget Office (1983–1985), and member of the National Assessment Governing Board (2019–2023).
Hanushek previously taught at the University of Rochester, Yale University, and the U.S. Air Force Academy. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and the International Academy of Education, and a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists and the American Educational Research Association. In 2004, he received the Thomas B. Fordham Prize for Distinguished Scholarship.
A Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Hanushek served in the Air Force from 1965 to 1974 and earned his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.