Stephen Burd is a senior writer and editor with the Education Policy program at New America, where he has helped shape the organization’s work on higher education policy and on student financial aid issues.
Burd edited the 2024 book Lifting the Veil on Enrollment Management: How a Powerful Industry is Limiting Social Mobility in American Higher Education.” Harvard Education Press, which published the edited volume, called it “a shrewd examination and critique of an industry that exerts a far-reaching influence on college admissions in the United States.” Burd is also the author of four volumes of Undermining Pell, which examines how colleges’ pursuit of prestige and revenue is hurting low-income students.
Burd has received multiple national reporting awards for his coverage of federal higher education policy and his investigative work on the student loan industry. A 2017 documentary, entitled Fail State, chronicled Steve’s work uncovering abuses at for-profit colleges and the for-profit higher education’s influence-peddling on Capitol Hill. He has also published articles and op-eds in the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hechinger Report, Inside Higher Ed, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and Washington Monthly.
Before coming to New America in 2007, Burd worked for 15 years as a reporter and senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education, where he reported on student aid policy and the inner workings of the U.S. Department of Education.
Burd has a bachelor’s degree in history from Swarthmore College.
