Jason D. Delisle is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works on higher education financing with an emphasis on student loan programs. Delisle started his career on Capitol Hill, first in the office of Representative Thomas Petri, then as an analyst for the US Senate Committee on the Budget. His work has led him to study the history and mechanics of federal student loans and other financial aid policies and to recommend budget process reforms for rules covering financial risk in government programs, including working on fair-value accounting for loan programs. Before joining AEI, Delisle served as director of the Federal Education Budget Project at New America, where he worked to improve the quality of public information on federal funding for education and the support of well-targeted federal education policies. He was also an informal adviser on higher education reform for Governor Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign. Delisle has written for a variety of publications, including Bloomberg View, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He has also appeared on numerous national television and radio programs, including Fox Business, National Public Radio, and the PBS NewsHour. Delisle has a master’s of public policy in budget and public finance from George Washington University and a bachelor of arts degree in government from Lawrence University.
Alex Usher is the president of Higher Education Strategy Associates. An internationally recognized expert in student financial aid and quality measurement in postsecondary education, Usher has authored numerous groundbreaking studies in higher education. In addition to his years of work on higher education in Canada, his recent work spans Asia, Europe, and Africa. In his former role as director of Educational Policy Institute Canada (EPI Canada), Usher managed the Measuring the Effectiveness of Student Aid project for the Millennium Scholarship Foundation, a four-year $4 million research project to investigate the long-term effects of student aid, and is the author of the project’s Final Report, appearing in early 2010. In 2002 and 2004, Usher coauthored (with Sean Junor) The Price of Knowledge, a volume considered the standard reference on student finance in Canada. More recently he has written the theme document for UNESCO Europe’s decennial meeting on higher education, “Ten Years Back and Ten Years Forward: Developments and Trends in Higher Education in Europe Region.” He sits on a variety of advisory, supervisory, and editorial boards in Canada, Europe, and Asia. Prior to joining the Educational Policy Institute in 2003 and founding Higher Education Strategy Associates, Usher served as the director of research and program development at the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. From 1996 to 1998 he served as a researcher and lobbyist for the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, and before that he was the first national director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. Usher holds degrees from McGill University and Carleton University.
