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.
- Ph.D. (Economics of Education) Columbia University, 2011
- M.Phil. (Economics of Education) Columbia University, 2010
- M.A. (Economics) Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, India, 2005
- B.Sc. (Economics) Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, India, 2003
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 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.
EDUC 5414.001 Economics of Education in Developing Countries (Fall)
EDUC 6462.001 Principals of Monitoring & Evaluation in International Education Development (Fall)
EDUC 7462.001 Advanced Topics in Monitoring & Evaluation in International Education Development (Spring)
DEMEG/SOCI 7960 Demographic, Economic and Social Interrelations (Spring)
EDUC 647.001 Global Perspectives on School Climate (Spring)
EDEN 5060.001 Economics of Education: Global Perspective (Fall)
EDEN 510.001 Evaluation for Innovation (Spring) (Co-Instructors: Dr. Jennifer Zapf & Dr. Liza Herzog)
Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals
Khalid, N., Hannum, E., Behrman, J. R., & Thapa, A. (in press). Floods and children’s education in rural India. The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences.
Thapa, A., Miranda, A., Sánchez, A., & Behrman, J. R. (2022). ‘Marketization’ of higher education in Peru: Who attends private institutions and what are the perceived advantages (disadvantages)? Higher Education Quarterly, 77(3), 465–485. https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12413
Thapa, A., Ice, M., Ramdass, J. V., & Cohen, J. (2022). Factors that contribute to post high-school success of young adults with learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 27(2), 26–43. https://doi.org/10.18666/LDMJ-2022-V27-I2-11473
Thapa, A., Ramdass, J. V., Cardillo, R., & Cohen, J. (2018). School climate improvement process: Lessons and findings from New York City schools. International Journal of School Climate and Violence Prevention, 4, 90–116.
Thapa, A., & Cohen, J. (2017). School climate community scale: Report on construct validity and internal consistency. School Community Journal, 27(2), 303–320.
Cohen, J., Thapa, A., & Higgins-D’Alessandro, A. (2017). School climate/social emotional learning measurement systems: Trends, contributions, challenges, and opportunities. Journal of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Inaugural Special Issue on the Gordon Paradigm of Inquiry and Practice, 117–139.
Cohen, J. & Thapa, A. (2017). School climate improvement: What do U.S. educators believe, need, and want? International Journal of School Climate and Violence Prevention, 2(1), 90–116.
Martinez, A., Coker, C., McMahon, S. D., Cohen, J. & Thapa, A. (2016). Involvement in extracurricular activities: Identifying differences in perceptions of school climate. The Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 33(1), 70–84.
Thapa, A. (2015). Public and private school performance in Nepal: An analysis using SLC examination. Education Economics, 23(1), 47–62.
Ice, M., Thapa, A., & Cohen, J. (2015). Recognizing community voice and a youth-led school–community partnership in the school climate improvement process. School Community Journal, 25(1), 9–28.
Thapa, A., Cohen, J., Guffey, S., & Higgins-D’Alessandro, A. (2013). A Review of school climate research. Review of Educational Research, 83(3), 357–385.
Thapa, A. (2013). Does private school competition improve public school performance? The case of Nepal. International Journal of Education Development, 33(4), 358–366.
Thapa, A. (2013). A case study on workers’ perceptions of psychological capital on their earnings. International Journal of Applied Behavioral Economics, 2(3), 27–42.
Invited Book Chapters
Thapa, A., & Cohen, J. (2023). School climate improvement: A data-driven strategy that supports individual and organizational health. In S. Goldstein & R. B. Brooks (Eds.), Handbook of resilience in children (3rd ed., pp. 539–548). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14728-9_29
Thapa, A., Panigrahi, J., & BenDavid-Hadar, I. (2020). Economics and finance of education: Review of developments, trends, and challenges. In A. W. Wiseman (Ed.), Annual review of comparative & international education 2019 (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 39, pp. 71–88). Emerald. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-367920200000039011
Thapa, A., & Maharjan, U. (2019). Higher education and economic development in Nepal. In K. Bista, S. Sharma, & R. L. Raby (Eds.), Higher education in Nepal: Policies and perspectives (pp. 23–34). Routledge.
Thapa, A. (2019). School climate. In G. Ritzer & C. Rojek (Eds.), Wiley Blackwell encyclopedia of sociology (2nd Ed.). Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405165518.wbeoss021.pub2
Coker, C., Martinez, A., McMahon, S. D., Cohen, J., & Thapa, A. (2018). Perceptions of school climate: The role of extracurricular activities. In K. Allen & C. Boyle (Eds.), Pathways to belonging: Contemporary research in school belonging (pp. 45–64). Brill Sense.
Other Publications
Thapa, A. (2021). Methods to demystify methods. University of Pennsylvania Almanac, Vol. 28, Iss. 11.
Thapa, A. (2022). Kavitanjali: Prakriti, Jeevan & Jagaran. Aishwarya. (A collection of poems in Nepali on nature, life, and awareness)