Ben Wildavsky

Ben Wildavsky is a visiting fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a veteran higher-education writer and consultant who formerly held leadership roles at Strada Education Network, the College Board, and U.S. News & World Report. He is the award-winning author of The Career Arts (Princeton, 2023) and The Great Brain Race (2010), and coeditor of Measuring Success (Johns Hopkins, 2018) and Reinventing Higher Education (Harvard Education Press, 2011). His next book—on what the U.S. can learn from the world’s work-focused education models—is under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press for publication in 2027. He has convened senior leaders and experts at the Brookings Institution, the Rockefeller Institute of Government, and the Kauffman Foundation. He hosted the Higher Ed Spotlight podcast (2022–2025) and has been recognized as a Fulbright Specialist and Salzburg Global Fellow. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and the Washington Post; his New York Times guest essay “Let’s Stop Pretending College Degrees Don’t Matter” was reprinted in the bestselling textbook The Norton Field Guide to Writing.