Judith Scott-Clayton is an Assistant Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she teaches courses on labor economics and quantitative methods for causal inference. She is also a Senior Research Associate at the Community College Research Center (CCRC) based at Teachers College, and a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her primary areas of study are labor economics and higher education policy, with a particular focus on financial aid, student employment, and programmatic barriers to persistence and completion at the non-selective public two- and four year institutions that enroll the majority of undergraduates.
Scott-Clayton's research has been published in the Journal of Human Resources, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Education Finance and Policy, and the Future of Children. Her recent research on the predictive validity of college placement exams merited an article and editorial in the New York Times, and has influenced state and institutional policies on remedial testing. Her quasi-experimental study of the impact of West Virginia's PROMISE scholarship (a state-funded merit-based tuition grant) received coverage from CNN and The New York Times Magazine. Her work examining the adverse consequences of complexity in the federal student aid application process has contributed to national policy debates about financial aid simplification. Ongoing projects include an evaluation of the impact of remediation on future college outcomes, an examination of the consequences of student employment, and an effort to link administrative data sources to analyze the impact of postsecondary experiences on future earnings trajectories.
Scott-Clayton is an active participant in policy working groups at the state and federal level, and she has contributed to the New York Times' Economix and Upshot blogs, focusing on current topics in education.