Veronica Minaya is a senior research associate and program lead at CCRC. Her research lies at the intersection of labor economics and higher education, particularly in the areas of community college reforms, high-school-to-college and college-to-work transitions, financial aid, and labor market trajectories after college. The goal of her work is to increase racial/ethnic and gender equality in education by rigorously examining ways to reduce wage and college completion gaps and providing experimental and quasi-experimental evidence to improve education policies. Her work has been published in economics of education and policy journals such as Education Finance and Policy, Economics of Education Review, European Economic Review, Fiscal Studies, and Research in Higher Education.
Prior to joining CCRC, Dr. Minaya worked as a consultant for the World Bank and UN agencies, where she was involved in several impact evaluation studies in education and rural development, in the design and implementation of a monitoring and evaluation system of two education programs in Afghanistan, and in the preliminary research phase for work towards improving academic resilience and strengthening and building education systems in conflict-affected countries.
Dr. Minaya is an adjunct professor at Teachers College and a research affiliate of the Postsecondary Equity & Economics Research Project, a joint initiative on accountability between scholars at George Washington University and Columbia University and attorneys at the National Student Legal Defense Network. She holds a PhD in economics and education from Teachers College, Columbia University, a master’s degree in public administration and international development from Harvard University, and a BA in economics from Universidad del Pacifico of Peru.
