Author Profile

Jane S. Shaw

Jane S. Shaw was president of the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy until February 2015, when she retired and joined the Pope Center's board of directors. Before joining the center in 2006, she was a senior fellow of PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana.

Before moving in to higher education policy, Shaw was a frequent writer and speaker on environmental topics. With Michael Sanera she coauthored Facts, Not Fear: Teaching Children about the Environment (Regnery 1999). She coedited A Guide to Smart Growth: Shattering Myths and Providing Solutions (Heritage Foundation, 2000) with Ronald Utt. Before joining PERC in 1984, she was an associate economics editor of Business Week. Shaw has a B.A. in English literature from Wellesley College. At that time her name was Jane Steidemann.

Shaw is a past president of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, editorial adviser to Econ Journal Watch, a member of the Editorial Advisory Panel of Regulation, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Council of the Institute of Economic Affairs (London). She is married to Richard L. Stroup.

Articles by Jane S. Shaw

Americans Want to Help Immigrants, Up to a Point

Dec 26, 2007 ·

In 1982, the Supreme Court decided that K-12 education could not be denied to illegal immigrants. Symbolically speaking, these children have now grown up and, twenty-five years later, the issue is whether illegal immigrants should be denied a college education at public community colleges and universities.

My view is that individuals who live in the United States, even though illegally, should be allowed to attend college if they pay the full cost of their education.

Illegal immigration is an emotionally wrenching issue because most Americans believe two things that currently contradict one another. They believe that our laws should be obeyed. Yet they recognize that today’s tight immigration laws fly in the face of a major reality: millions of people live in nearby countries whose governments have ruined their economies, making their citizens desperate to leave.

Accountability – What Is It?

Dec 17, 2007 ·

“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
You can send your son to college, but you can’t make him think.”

This little ditty ran through my mind as I was trying to understand the accountability movement of colleges and universities. Under pressure from the federal government, higher education institutions are scrambling to find ways to measure and report “learning outcomes” – that is, to show that students learn something after four years at their institution. This week, at a Washington, D.C., meeting of a Department of Education accreditation advisory group, that pressure will increase.

Fifty years ago, the student was accountable for learning, not the college.