Lesley J. Turner
Associate Professor
Harris School of Public Policy
Lesley J. Turner’s research broadly considers the roles that government should play in providing, financing, and regulating education. Her recent work examines how the incentives built into the current structure of the financing of higher education affect students and colleges, and the implications these effects have for students’ educational attainment, labor market outcomes, and financial well-being.
She is also a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and a distinguished CESifo affiliate in the economics of education. Turner has served as a senior advisor in the office of the under secretary and office of the chief economist at the US Department of Education. Prior to that, she was an education fellow in the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Turner holds a joint BA/MPP from the University of Michigan and a PhD in economics from Columbia University, where she received the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research Dissertation Award for the best doctoral dissertation in labor economics. Previously, she was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Maryland and an associate professor of economics at Vanderbilt University.