Martin Carnoy is Vida Jacks Professor of Education and Economics at Stanford University. He writes on the economic value of education, on the underlying political economy of educational policy, and on the financing and resource allocation aspects of educational production. Much of his work is comparative and international and investigates the impact of global economic and social change on the way educational systems are organized. Examples of this are his books, Faded Dreams (1994), Sustaining the New Economy: Work, Family and Community in the Information Age (2000), The Charter School Dust-Up (co-author, 2005); Cuba's Academic Advantage (2007), and Vouchers and Public School Performance (2007). He and colleagues from South Africa and Botswana have recently published an innovative study on primary schooling in southern Africa, The Low Achievement Trap, and he is currently completing a book on higher educational change in the large developing countries-Brazil, Russia, India, and China-known as the BRICs. He has also done a recent analysis with colleagues at the Open University of Catalonia analyzing the relative success of adults attending virtual universities.