Eric Alan 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 whose research has profoundly influenced policy worldwide. Born on May 22, 1943, he graduated as a Distinguished Graduate from the United States Air Force Academy in 1965 before completing his PhD in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968. His distinguished career includes military service from 1961 to 1974 followed by academic appointments at the U.S. Air Force Academy from 1968 to 1973, Yale University from 1975 to 1978, and the University of Rochester from 1978 to 2000. Since joining Stanford's Hoover Institution in 2000, he has established himself as a preeminent scholar whose rigorous economic analyses have reshaped global understanding of educational systems and their societal impacts.
Dr. Hanushek pioneered the measurement of teacher quality through student achievement growth, creating the conceptual foundation for value-added approaches now widely adopted in teacher and school evaluations across numerous countries. His extensive scholarship, comprising more than 300 widely cited articles and 26 books, has fundamentally transformed educational policy discussions with works such as The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth, which demonstrates the critical link between national economic growth and population skill levels. His research on class size reduction, school accountability mechanisms, and teacher effectiveness has provided evidence-based insights that continue to shape educational reforms worldwide, while Universal Basic Skills: What Countries Stand to Gain quantifies the substantial economic benefits nations gain from improving foundational cognitive skills.
In 2021, Dr. Hanushek received the prestigious Yidan Prize for Education Research, recognizing his lifetime of transformative contributions to the field. He has served in significant public roles including as chair of the National Board for Education Sciences from 2008 to 2010, deputy director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1983 to 1985, and member of the National Assessment Governing Board from 2019 to 2023. As a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and area coordinator for Economics of Education at CESifo, he continues to advance the field through international collaborations and mentorship. His current research investigates why certain countries' educational systems consistently outperform others, providing crucial insights that will continue to inform global educational improvement efforts for generations to come.
