Laura is the Project Lead on Higher Education Finance at the Jain Family Institute. She completed her Masters Degree in International Finance and Economic Policy at Columbia University SIPA. Laura has produced extensive tools for understanding and comparing existing higher education financing models and the projected impacts of ISAs, among other options. She is the lead research of JFI's ongoing "Geography of Higher Education" project, which studies inequalities in access to higher ed in the United States. Laura grew up in Atlanta, GA.


How Schools Lie

The deceptive financial aid system at America's colleges.

No matter how talented, hard working, and committed a student is, if financing falls through, the dream of obtaining higher education can be dashed. But much of the financial data that prospective students receive is misleading. In the cost information…


Unceasing Debt, Disparate Burdens: Student Debt and Young America

JFI’s interactive map presents the geography of student debt.

Since the Great Recession, outstanding student loan debt in the United States has increased by 122% in 2019 dollars, reaching the staggering sum of $1.66 trillion in June of this year. Student loan debt has grown faster than other debt…


Mapping concentration and prices in the US higher education industry During and after the Great Recession, public funding for higher education was slashed as part of state budget austerity. Staff and programs were cut and tuition rose; in many states,…


Mapping market concentration in the higher education industry In much of the existing higher education literature, “college access” is understood in terms of pre-college educational attainment, social and informational networks, and financial capacity, both for tuition and living expenses. The…