About

Edward P. St. John is an emeritus professor of education at the University of Michigan, where he served as the Algo D. Henderson Collegiate Professor of Education and as a professor with the Center for the Study on Higher and Postsecondary Education. He is an expert on school reform, financing higher education, and addressing inequalities in access to education.

He was a 2017 Fulbright Scholar to Trinity College in Dublin, where he worked on initiatives supporting schools in low-income neighborhoods and innovations to help aspiring scholars. He is currently involved in efforts to build international exchanges among scholars committed to promoting social justice through education projects and community-based action. He is slated to become co-director of the new Center for Education Development and Social Justice at Beijing Normal University.

St. John previously worked as a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University, where he was director of the Indiana Education Policy Center from 1998 to 2002. While at Michigan, he collaborated with organizations including the Ford Foundation, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on issues of school reform, affirmative action, and college access and retention. Several of his grants supported development of reforms in Detroit high schools.

St. John has written extensively on K-16 education policy, including co-editing Actionable Research for Educational Equity and Social Justice: Higher Education Reform in China and Beyond (Routledge, 2018) and co-authoring the forthcoming book Community Action Toward Social Justice: Social, Economic, and Educational Change in Detroit (with Feven Girmay, Palgrave). Among his other books are Left Behind: Urban High Schools and the Failed Markets (John Hopkins University Press, 2015, with Victoria Bigelow, Kim Lijana, and Johanna Masse); Research, Actionable Knowledge and Social Change: Reclaiming Social Responsibility Through Research in Partnerships with Practitioners (Sterling Press, 2013); Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (co-edited with Maia Chankseliani, Heinz-Dieter Meyer, and Lina Uribe Sense Publishers, 2013); and Pathways to Academic Success: Expanding Opportunity for Underrepresented Students (Routledge, 2010, with Glenda Musboa).

He is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and was awarded the Association for the Study of Higher Education’s Research Achievement Award in 2010 and its Leadership Award in 2002.

He received a BS and MEd from the University of California, Davis, and an EdD from Harvard University.