Doug Shapiro is a nonresident fellow in the Work, Education, and Justice Division at the Urban Institute. His research focuses on exploring how postsecondary student enrollment, progression, and outcomes are changing and their relationship to trends in demographics, the economy, and the workforce.

Shapiro retired in 2025 from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) as vice president for research, having worked for more than 15 years to build the NSC Research Center into a vital national resource for reports and analysis on postsecondary students. He established key new metrics on college access, persistence, transfer, and completion, helping high schools, colleges, and states measure and benchmark their students’ progress. Before that, he served as director of institutional research at The New School and as vice president for research and policy at the Minnesota Private College Council. He currently serves on the board of directors of the National College Attainment Network. Shapiro has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Chicago and a master’s degree in mathematics and a doctoral degree in education from the University of Michigan.