Morton Schapiro

Morton Schapiro is executive vice president and senior advisor at TWG Global as of September 2022. He also became president emeritus of Northwestern University on September 2022, after serving as the 16th president from September 2009. He is a professor of economics in Northwestern’s Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and also holds appointments in the J. L. Kellogg School of Management and the School of Education and Social Policy.

President Schapiro is among the nation’s leading authorities on the economics of higher education, with particular exper¬tise in the area of college financing and affordability and on trends in educational costs and student aid.

Previously he was president of Williams College from 2000 to 2009. He had served earlier as a member of the Williams College faculty from 1980 to 1991 as professor of economics and assistant provost. In 1991 he went to the University of Southern California, where he served as chair of the Department of Economics until 1994 and then as dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences until 2000. During his last two years as dean, he also served as the university’s vice president for planning.

President Schapiro has written more than 100 articles and written or edited ten books, including his most recent book, Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us (with Gary Saul Morson, Princeton University Press, 2021); 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); and Keeping College Affordable: Government and Educational Opportunity (with Michael McPherson, Brookings Institution, 1991). He has also authored dozens of essays and commentaries for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chronicle of Higher Education and numerous other publications.

He has received research grants and contracts from the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Education, the World Bank, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the College Board, the Organization for Economic Coopera¬tion 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.