Alicia C. Dowd is an assistant professor in the Rossier School of Education of the University of Southern California. A former faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Alicia collaborated with NERCHE on a number of projects, including the Community College Student Success Project and the Community College Transfer Initiative research study, funded by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, the Lumina Foundation for Education, and the Nellie Mae Foundation. Alicia’s research focuses on political-economic issues of public college finance equity, efficiency and accountability and the factors affecting student attainment in higher education. She was the principal investigator of two national research and service projects evaluating institutional assessment, effectiveness and student success at community colleges.

Alicia is the author of “From Access to Outcome Equity: Revitalizing the Democratic Mission of the Community College,” which appeared in the Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science. She also authored articles focusing on the effects of financial aid on student persistence and degree attainment in national samples of college students which appeared in Research in Higher Education and the Education Policy Analysis Archives. Her recent research analyzing community college finance equity and efficiency has appeared in Urban Review and in the Review of Higher Education.

Alicia received the Bachelor of Arts, Masters and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University, where her doctoral fields of study were social foundations and administration of education, labor economics and curriculum.