M. Najeeb Shafiq is Professor of Education, Economics, and International Affairs. He holds appointments in the School of Education (primary appointment), Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (joint appointment), and Department of Economics (secondary appointment).
As a comparative education economist, Professor Shafiq adopts an interdisciplinary approach and advanced quantitative methods to explore the following topics:
Education and social mobility in low- and middle-income countries
The social and non-monetary benefits of education (the effect of education on civic, moral, and political outcomes)
Education reform (educational privatization; early childhood education; higher education)
Human capital decisions (labor market benefits; gender gaps; child labor)
His articles have appeared in economics, education, and development studies journals such as American Journal of Education, Economics of Education Review, Education Economics, Education Policy Analysis Archives, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Development Studies, Journal of International Development, International Journal of Educational Development, Research in Higher Education, and World Development. Professor Shafiq and his co-authors received the 2014 Outstanding Journal of Education FinanceAward. He has been a Consulting Editor for the journal Research in Higher Education since 2011. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the journal Comparative Education Review.
Prior to arriving in Pittsburgh in 2010, Professor Shafiq held appointments at the World Bank, Washington and Lee University, and Indiana University at Bloomington. In Spring 2014, he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge. He received his Ph.D in Economics and Education from Columbia University in 2005. He is married to Nazia Farzin Shafiq, with whom he has three daughters, Airah, Manal, and Nazeeba.