Kevin Carey

Kevin Carey (born October 6, 1970) is an American higher education writer and policy analyst. He serves as Director of the Education Policy Program at New America, a non-profit, non-partisan research organization based in Washington, D.C. He writes regularly on education for The Upshot at the New York Times, and is guest editor of the annual Washington Monthly College Guide. He has taught education policy at Johns Hopkins University, and was a monthly columnist for six years at The Chronicle of Higher Education. and by Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews as “the best higher education writer in the country.”

Carey has written features and articles for The New York Times, The New Republic, Slate, and The American Prospect, among other publications. He has testified to the United States Senate and House of Representatives committees on education, and has appeared as a commentator on CNN, C-SPAN, NPR, and other media outlets. His writing was anthologized in Best American Legal Writing, and he has received an Education Writers Association award for commentary. Between 1999 and 2001 he was Indiana’s Assistant State Budget Director for Education. He lives with his wife and daughter in Arlington, VA. He later became a Senior Analyst for the Indiana Senate Finance Committee, where he wrote legislation and advised the Democratic caucus on matters of fiscal policy. where he served as Director of Policy Research and created the CollegeResults.org graduation rate website. At Education Sector he led the organization's policy team, and headed up policy development in K-12 and higher education. He also wrote an in-depth profile of education historian Diane Ravitch for The New Republic in 2011.

In 2012 Carey became Director of New America's Education Policy Program, which focuses its research on improving outcomes for low-income learners and expanding public access to information. His recent research and writing has focused on the intersection of technology and higher education, including the prospects of digital badges in education, and Massive Open Online Courses.

Books Carey, K., The End of College. Riverhead Books, 2015 Kelly, A., and Carey, K. Stretching the Higher Education Dollar. Harvard Education Press, 2013. Carey, K., Kelly, A., and Wildavsky, B. Reinventing Higher Education: The Promise of Innovation. Harvard Education Press, 2011. Carey, K. and Schneider, M. Accountability in American Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.