Alexander Mayer

Mayer is Director for MDRC’s Postsecondary Education policy area. He directs research studies, develops new projects, and conducts outreach to policymakers, practitioners, and other stakeholders. Alex is Principal Investigator for Text Ed, a project to develop, implement, and test a text messaging intervention for clients of Educational Opportunity Centers across the country. He is co-Principal Investigator for the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness, a national center to study developmental (remedial) education, which includes three major studies: a nationally representative descriptive study of developmental education; a random assignment evaluation of the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways; and a random assignment evaluation of a new method to assess students’ college-readiness using multiple measures. Alex is also Project Director for a study of Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success, an initiative to better integrate data and technology in student advising. He was previously Project Director for the evaluation of the Achieving the Dream initiative, and has been a lead researcher on the Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration, Aid Like A Paycheck, and the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency project, among others. Prior to joining MDRC, Alex cofounded and led a small nonprofit organization for public schools in San Francisco and also worked as a software engineer and consultant. He holds a BS with double majors in physics and mathematics from the College of William and Mary and a PhD in political science from the University of California, Davis.