Tatiana Velasco is an applied microeconomist specializing in the economics of education and labor economics. At CCRC, Velasco examines how students’ transitions into and through postsecondary education affect student outcomes and materialize in advancement in the labor market. To do so, she combines national and state administrative data with advanced methods and frameworks in economics and statistics. Velasco is currently leading the quantitative analysis in the Transfer Student Success research aiming at advancing racial and socioeconomic equity and conducting research on Dual Enrollment pathways and how those explain student outcomes.
Velasco holds a PhD in economics and education from Teachers College, Columbia University and an MA in economics and BA in political science from the Universidad de Los Andes of Colombia. Her dissertation examined the equity consequences of financial aid policies in Colombia using novel administrative data and creative methods. Her first paper estimates the returns to higher education for low-income students benefiting from a student loan program. Her job market paper used college data to track students' co-movements through turnstiles located across a university campus to examine whether diversifying selective colleges through financial aid policies changed social interactions and to test if said changes impacted academic performance. Her research earned her the National Academy of Education / Spencer Dissertation Fellowship.
Velasco previously worked at CCRC as a senior research assistant while she completed her Ph.D. at TC. During that time, she led the analysis of Key Performance Indicators for 26 colleges as a part of the student advising research and supported the CAPR RCT team as a quantitative analyst. Before her doctoral studies, Velasco worked as a researcher at the School of Economics at the Universidad de Los Andes, where she co-authored several papers on economics of education published in peer-reviewed journals
