Michael N. Bastedo is Professor of Education, Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education (CSHPE), University of Michigan. He is also Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Affairs in the School of Education. He is also affiliated faculty in Organizational Studies, Engineering Education Research, and the Center for European Studies.
In 2013, Professor Bastedo received the Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA), for distinguished contribution to education research in the first decade after earning the Ph.D. He was the first scholar of higher education to win the award in its 30-year history. In 2021, he was selected as an AERA fellow, in recognition of sustained excellence in education research.
In 2005-06, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. He was also an Associate of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. Until 2006, he was the research director of the Institutes on Public University Governance, supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He has also been a Ford Foundation Global Policy Fellow at the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a visiting policy fellow at the Bellagio Center in Italy, and a visting scholar at the Center de Sociologie des Organisations at the Institut d’Études Politiques (SciencesPo) in Paris.
His scholarly interests are in the organization, stratification, and decision making of public higher education institutions in the U.S. and abroad, with a recent focus on college admissions, rankings, and enrollment management. His work has been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Research in Higher Education, Review of Higher Education, Journal of Higher Education, American Higher Education in the 21st Century (3rd edition), and The Sociology of Higher Education. His edited books are The Organization of Higher Education: Managing Colleges for a New Era and American Higher Education in the 21st Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges (both Johns Hopkins University Press).
Professor Bastedo is an associate editor at the American Educational Research Journal, consulting editor at Research in Higher Education and was previously elected to the editorial boards of The Journal of Higher Education and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. His research has been reported by journalists at the New York Times, The New Yorker, U.S. News & World Report, The Economist and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among others.
Prior to entering the academic profession, Dr. Bastedo held policy positions with the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, and research positions in the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement and the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research. He holds the A.B. with honors from Oberlin College, an M.A. with distinction from Boston College, and the A.M. in Sociology and Ph.D. in Administration and Policy Analysis from Stanford University.