Experts

An expert in student loans and finances, paying for college, and college affordability and choice, Laura W. Perna researches how individual characteristics, social structures and public policies enable or restrict women, racial/ethnic minorities and people of lower socio-economic status in gaining opportunities in higher education.

She authored a study with co-investigator Dr. Joni Finney, examining higher-education policies and performance in Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Texas and Washington state as indicators of the nation’s performance overall.

Dr. Perna has offered recommendations based on her research to federal policymakers through invited testimony to the U.S. Senate’s Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee and the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training, Committee on Education and the Workforce, United States House of Representatives.

She is chair of the Faculty Senate at the University of Pennsylvania, chair of the Higher Education Division of the Graduate School of Education, faculty fellow of the Institute for Urban Research, faculty affiliate of the Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative, member of the advisory board for the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, and member of the Social Welfare Graduate Group of the School of Social Policy & Practice.

Recent books include Understanding the Working College Student: New Research and Its Implications for Policy and Practice (2010, Stylus), Preparing Today’s Students for Tomorrow’s Jobs in Metropolitan America: The Policy, Practice, and Research Issues (2012, University of Pennsylvania Press), The State of College Access and Completion: Improving College Success for Students from Underrepresented Groups (with Anthony Jones, 2013, Routledge), and The Attainment Agenda: State Policy Leadership for Higher Education (with Joni Finney, 2014, Johns Hopkins University Press).