Research Bio

Tolani Britton uses quasi-experimental methods to explore the impact of policies on students’ transition from secondary school to higher education, as well as access and retention in higher education. 

Prior to earning her doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Professor Britton worked as a high school math teacher and college counselor in New York City public schools and as a policy analyst for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, France. Her scholastic credentials include a Master of Arts in Economics from Tufts University, a Master of Arts in French Cultural Studies from Columbia University, and a Bachelor of Arts in both Economics and French Literature from Tufts University.

Professor Britton received a 2023 - 2028 NSF CAREER award, a 2023 Association for Education Finance and Policy Early Career Award, an AERA Division L (Educational Policy and Politics) Early Career Award and a CIES Ernest D. Morell African Diaspora Emerging Scholar Award in 2022. She is a 2021 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow. She also received a Russell Sage Foundation Pipeline Grant for Emerging Scholars in 2020 and was a 2016 National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow. 

Recent publications:

Reimagining the machine learning life cycle to improve educational outcomes of students.

The effects of student–teacher ethnoracial matching on exclusionary discipline for Asian American, Black, and Latinx students: Evidence from New York City

The keys to endurance: An investigation of the institutional factors relating to the persistence of historically Black colleges and universities

College or bust...or both: The Effects of the Great Recession on College Enrollment for Black and Latinx Young Adults

Does Locked Up Mean Locked Out? The Effects of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 on Black Male Students’ College Enrollment

Research Expertise and Interest

social research methods, higher education policy, economics of higher education