Assistant Professor, Hobby School of Public Affairs

Expertise: Education Policy, Economics of Education, Labor Economics, Program Evaluation, with a focus on alternative academic pathways and adult education.

Career Highlights:

Blake Heller earned his Ph.D. in Public Policy at Harvard University. He has an M.Sc. in economics and philosophy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an M.A. in teaching from Dominican University. His research and teaching focus on applied microeconomics and policy analysis, with a particular emphasis on education policy topics including alternative academic pathways, vocational education, adult training, and immigrant language skills. Heller is the co-PI of the Massachusetts English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Impact Study in partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which assesses the impact of adult ESOL services on measures of immigrant integration, including civic engagement and reported earnings.  

Heller's work is published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Education Finance and Policy among others. Most recently, Heller was a post-doctoral research scholar at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College of Education and Human Development. Prior to his doctoral studies, he worked as a research analyst and project manager at the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University and taught mathematics to middle school and high school students at 21^st Century Charter School in Gary, Indiana.