Ben Wildavsky

Ben Wildavsky is the author of The Career Arts: Making the Most of College, Credentials, and Connections (Princeton University Press, November 2023). He hosts the Higher Ed Spotlight podcast and is a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development. His decades of experience in journalism and education policy include leadership and research roles at Strada Education Network, the Brookings Institution, the Kauffman Foundation, and U.S. News & World Report. He is the award-winning author of The Great Brain Race and coeditor of Reinventing Higher Education and Measuring Success, with bylines in many national magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and the Washington Post.

He has been a speaker on higher education globalization, degree value, and innovation in 16 U.S. states and 10 foreign countries, including events at Google, Harvard, the World Bank, the OECD in Paris, and the London School of Economics. He received a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature (Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude) from Yale University.