Nikki Edgecombe is a senior research scholar at the Community College Research Center (CCRC) and a research professor in the Education Policy and Social Analysis Department at Teachers College, Columbia University. She conducts research on developmental education, English learners, higher education finance, teaching and learning, and faculty development, among other topics. She is the principal investigator for the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness (CAPR) and a co-principal investigator for the Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative, both U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences (IES)-funded research and development centers jointly run with MDRC and SRI Education, respectively. Edgecombe also leads IES studies on English learners in community colleges and on the adaptation of Lesson Study for community college mathematics instruction.

Edgecombe oversees CCRC’s research portfolio on developmental education, which, in recent years, has included a mixed-methods study of developmental English reform and English as a Second Language in three states and the implementation portion of the MDRC-led IES evaluation of CUNY Start. She previously led several other studies examining the implementation and outcomes of developmental education reforms around the country. Edgecombe also studies and writes about education equity and recently wrote “Demography as Opportunity,” a chapter in the 2019 edited volume Thirteen Ideas That Are Transforming the Community College World.

Edgecombe joined CCRC from JPMorgan, where she studied the financial and organizational performance of publicly traded companies and made investment recommendations to institutional clients. Prior to her work in the private sector, she studied teacher learning and school-based professional development at the Urban Education Institute (formerly the Center for School Improvement) and Consortium on School Research at the University of Chicago. She holds a PhD and a MSEd in Education from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Urban Studies–Economics from Columbia University.