Michael S. McPherson served as President of the Spencer Foundation for fourteen years before retiring in 2017.  Earlier he was President of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota for seven years.  He is a nationally known economist whose expertise focuses on the interplay between education and economics.  McPherson is co-author or editor of a number of books, including Can College Level the Playing Field: Higher Education in an Unequal Society, Campus Economics: How Economic Thinking Can Help Improve College and University Decisions, Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities, The Student Aid Game, and Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy. McPherson was founding co-editor of the journal Economics and Philosophy.  He has been a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, at the Brookings Institution, and at the Mellon Foundation. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society. He is currently a non-resident Fellow at the Urban Institute.

Dr. McPherson holds a BA in mathematics, a MA in economics, and a PhD in economics, all from the University of Chicago.