Rachel Baker

Current Position: 

Assistant Professor, University of California, Irvine

Rachel Baker is an Assistant Professor of Education Policy at the University of California, Irvine's School of Education. She earned her PhD in Education Policy and the Economics of Education at Stanford University. Rachel studies inequalities in access to and success in higher education using behavioral economic models of decision making and quasi-experimental and experimental methods. She has studied transfer patterns and policies, agent based simulations of race- and ses-based affirmative action policies, students' knowledge of labor market outcomes, and descriptive and experimental work on persistence in online classes. She works closely with the California Community Colleges. Rachel graduated with a B.A. in psychology and elementary education from Dartmouth College. Her professional experience includes teaching elementary school in the Marshall Islands, working as a literacy specialist at a school for the Deaf, and coordinating college readiness programming at The Steppingstone Foundation in Boston.