Alexander Astin

Alexander W. Astin (born May 30, 1932) is the Allan M. Cartter Professor of Higher Education Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also Founding Director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. He has served as Director of Research for both the American Council on Education and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. He is also the Founding Director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, an ongoing national study of some twelve million students, 250,000 faculty and staff, and 1,800 higher education institutions.

Dr. Astin has authored 20 books and more than 300 other publications in the field of higher education, and has been a recipient of awards for outstanding research from more than a dozen national associations and professional societies. He has also been elected to membership in the National Academy of Education, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and a recipient of eleven honorary degrees.

A 1990 study in the Journal of Higher Education identified Dr. Astin as the most frequently-cited author in the field of higher education. In 1985 readers of Change magazine selected Dr. Astin as the person "most admired for creative, insightful thinking" in the field of higher education. His latest book is (with H.S. Astin) Leadership Reconsidered: Engaging Higher Education in Social Change (W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2000).

Personal life

Astin was born May 30, 1932, in Washington, D.C., to the late Margaret Linnie Mackenzie and Dr. Allen Varley Astin, a physicist and the fifth director of the National Bureau of Standards. He married Helen Stavridou on Feb. 11, 1956. They have been colleagues at UCLA since 1973 and have collaborated on many research projects. They have two sons, John Alexander and Paul Allen, and three granddaughters, Erin, Amalia and Ila.

Astin is the younger brother of John Astin (Gomez on "The Addams Family").