Sara Goldrick-Rab, PhD, is a scholar-activist whose pathbreaking research, teaching, and advocacy has changed how higher education understands and supports college students. A sociologist, she focuses on reducing poverty by revealing unheard truths and sharing that knowledge with multiple publics. Sara’s award-winning book, Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, documents the failures of policymakers and higher education institutions to make college affordable. Her scientific studies identifying and addressing college students’ basic needs for food, housing, childcare, transportation, and health supports sparked the internationally-known #RealCollege movement and inspired federal and state data collection and legislation, as well as countless privately-funded programs.
Sara has founded, led, and supported the growth of multiple organizations transforming higher education. In 2013 she founded the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, and for almost a decade oversaw its growth into The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, a 50-person national university center with an annual budget of more than $8M. In 2016 she founded Believe in Students, a national nonprofit that distributed more than $2M in emergency aid to students during the pandemic and empowers faculty to become powerful educators that recognize their students are humans first. In 2019 she translated her research findings into a product that makes it possible for low-income people to access emergency support quickly and with dignity; that work is now advanced by Beam, a Brooklyn-based company.
The recipient of many awards, Sara has appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and won the $100,000 Grawemeyer prize, which she distributed to students around the country. In 2016, POLITICO magazine named Sara one of the top 50 people shaping American politics. She earned a Carnegie Fellowship, a William T. Grant Foundation Faculty Scholars Award, the American Educational Research Association’s Early Career Award, and in 2021 she was named a Monumental Alumna by George Washington University. As a university professor, Sara earned tenure at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and spent nearly 20 years there and at Temple University.
Having retired from academia in 2022, Sara now collaborates, mentors, and writes with people and organizations around the world as CEO of EduOptimists. She also serves as senior fellow at Education Northwest and teaches Sociology 101 at the Community College of Philadelphia. Her next book, Real College, is under development.
