A researcher, social scientist, and policy advocate with a passion for promoting equity. I am currently a Fellow at The Century Foundation where I work on higher education policy, with a focus on for-profit education, online education, and institutional accountability.
Prior to joining The Century Foundation, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Higher Education, Race, and the Economy Lab, where I studied online degree programs in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors as well as race and class differentials in the uptake of income-driven repayment.
Broadly, I have expertise in education and inequality research, and I am skilled at using quantitative methods to examine race and class differentials in access and returns to education. I am particularly interested in understanding how educational experiences affect one’s life chances.
My work has been featured in Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World and Social Forces, and The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. I have also written about student debt for The New York Times.
I received my Ph.D and M.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles and my B.A. in Sociology from The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to graduate school, I taught elementary school through Teach For America in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Amber D. Villalobos, Ph.D. 