Rachel Baker is an associate professor in the Policy, Organizations, Leadership, and Systems Division at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Baker studies issues in access to and success in higher education with a focus on students in broad-access institutions.
Baker’s work has one main aim: to increase access, persistence, and success in higher education for traditionally underserved groups. Baker approaches this broad goal through three related lines of research: (a) understanding how various policies affect how community college students make decisions about majors and transfer, (b) describing patterns of college enrollment by race and socio-economic status over time, and (c) measuring, and then intervening to enhance, students’ self-regulatory skills using interaction data from online classes. She is working with CCRC on a study on how students choose programs.