Professional Biography
Amrit Thapa is a senior lecturer in the International Educational Development Program and an instructor in the Education Entrepreneurship program at Penn GSE. He also serves as a lecturer in the Department of Sociology in the School of Arts and Sciences. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, India, and M.Phil. and Ph.D. in economics and education from Columbia University. Dr. Thapa is also a research affiliate at Penn’s Population Studies Center, a Fulbright specialist, an affiliated researcher for the Center for Benefit–Cost Studies of Education at Penn GSE, consultant to UNESCO Institute of Statistics, and an advisory board member of the International Journal of Educational Development. In 2019, Dr. Thapa was honored with the prestigious Penn GSE Excellence in Teaching Award.
Prior to Penn GSE, Dr. Thapa worked as a research director at the National School Climate Center (NSCC), an educational non-profit organization, where he was involved in a number of school climate-related projects such as development and validity/reliability studies of school climate/SEL metrics, comparative study of schools with and without social inclusion programs in collaboration with Special Olympics International, and studying the lives of students with learning disabilities over time. Dr. Thapa has also served as vice president and representative to the United Nations for the Institute of Global Education (IGE), an NGO that has consultative status with the Economic & Social Council of the United Nations. He was involved as a researcher for the Schott Foundation for Public Education and was a teaching fellow for the Program in Economic Policy Management (PEPM) at the School of International & Public Affairs at Columbia University. Dr. Thapa has also taught graduate-level economics of education courses at the Teachers College, Columbia University, and undergraduate level economics courses at Queens College, City University of New York, and Kathmandu University, Nepal. Dr. Thapa finds fulfillment in community service activities, enjoys poetry and music, and loves to travel and spend time outdoors with mother nature.
Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. Thapa’s current research focuses on economics of education, education program evaluation/monitoring and evaluation, education and climate change, studies of privatization and marketization of education in developing countries, education and economic development, higher education, and school climate. As the vice-president of the Institute of Global Education, he has led a project exploring the use of online education for teaching marginalized students English and computer literacy in Nepal. This project was awarded the best field initiative by the South Asia SIG at the annual conference of Comparative and International Society in 2018. Recently, Dr. Thapa was awarded a research grant by Penn’s India Research Engagement Fund (IREF) as the principal investigator along with Dr. Emily Hannum (Co-PI) and Dr. Jere Behrman (Co-PI) from Penn’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), where he is engaged in studies relating to floods and their impacts on children’s education in rural India. Dr. Thapa has also been collaborating as a Co-PI on a research study awarded by Penn IREF on the impact of tech-based teaching on learning in India with Dr. Dan Wagner (PI).
Besides South Asia, Dr. Thapa’s research spans Latin American and sub-Saharan African countries as well. He currently serves as an investigator in a larger grant by the National Science Foundation on issues relating to climate change and education in several developing countries (PI: Dr. Emily Hannum; Co-PIs: Dr. Jere Behrman, Dr. Fan Wang). He was also awarded a research grant by the Global Engagement Fund at Penn as the principal investigator along with Dr. Jere Behrman (Co-PI) from Penn’s GSAS. In this mixed methods research project, Dr. Thapa and team, in collaboration with researchers at Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE), examined the economic and equity aspects of marketization of higher education in Peru. Dr. Thapa is also involved in a number of school climate/socio-emotional learning-related research works, particularly in the development and validity and reliability studies of school climate assessment tools.
Dr. Thapa has authored a number of book chapters and has published research papers in several international journals. He serves as reviewer, chair, and discussant, and presents his empirical research works in a number of international conferences such as the Comparative and International Education Society, United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training, the American Educational Research Association, and the Association of Education Economics.