Margaret de Leon

Hi! My name is Margaret (Margie) de Leon, and I am a Vanier Scholar pursuing a PhD in Comparative International Higher Education and Policy at the University of Toronto. My research interests include college affordability, economics of education, and financial aid policy in the United States and Canada.

I am a Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University, CSHE Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, Research Affiliate at the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (CCWT) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a Junior Fellow and Don of Hall at Massey College. I completed my MA in Higher Education and Educational Policy at the University of Toronto and my BA in Political Science and French at Trinity College.

Apart from my academic life, I am currently engaged as a Policy Research Associate at the Division of People and Culture at the University of Toronto Students’ Union. I have previously worked in government policy research at the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), the Diversity Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University, and City of Toronto working on projects related to access to postsecondary education and digital literacy.

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research news

📝 Conference paper, Assessing the Impact of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Policy on U.S. Medical Residency and Specialty Choice, accepted for presentation at the 2 026 Association for Education Finance and Policy in Chicago, Illinois.
📝 Conference paper, Computational Analysis of Financial Aid Information on US Community Colleges: Evidence from California and Texas, accepted for presentation at the 2 026 Association for Education Finance and Policy in Chicago, Illinois.
🔍 Journal article, The propensities and purposes of racial and ethnic student data collection in Ontario universities, accepted for publication in Race Ethnicity and Education on November 5th, 2025.
📝 Conference paper, Cross-Border Policy Diffusion and Discourse: Computational Analysis of Financial Aid Reform in the United States and Canada, accepted for presentation at the 2026 Annual Conference of the Comparative International Education Society in San Francisco, California, United States.
👩‍🏫 Presented How the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is Reshaping Student Debt, Loan Forgiveness, and Medical Education: A computational perspective on policy, equity, and the physician workforce in the United States at the Junior Fellow Lecture Series at Massey College.
👩‍🏫 Presented A Computational Analysis of Financial Aid Information in California Community Colleges at the Stanford Summer Institute for Computational Social Sciences, research training program in computational methods, on August 15th 2025.
🏆 Awarded the 2025 Vanier Scholarship for doctoral research, A Comparative Study on Working Learners in the United States and Canada. The Vanier Scholarship is Canada’s most prestigious doctoral award, supporting PhD students who demonstrate leadership and a high standard of scholarly achievement.
📝 Conference paper, Access, Equity, and Nudges: Synthesizing Evidence on Behavioral Strategies in Federal Aid, accepted for presentation at the 2025 Association for the Study of Higher Education Conference in Denver, Colorado.
📝 Conference paper, The Future of Student Work: Financial Aid, Gig Labor, and Economic Inequality, accepted for presentation at the 2025 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois.
⭐️ Press Release: A Longitudinal Study on Working Learners in the United States and Canada featured on the Fulbright Program website for International Education Week.
📝 Conference paper, The Dual Role of the Fulbright Program in International Academic Relations, accepted for presentation at the 2025 Comparative International Education Society Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois.
🏆 Appointed Visiting Doctoral Scholar at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California Berkeley for project, A Longitudinal Study on Working Learners in the United States and Canada.
🏆 George Flower Award for Advanced Studies in Education awarded in recognition of being a recipient of the Fulbright Research Scholarship.
🏆 CanStudyUS Home and Away Fellowship awarded for community development project, Policy Advocacy for Postsecondary Affordability, for the Persistence Project.
🏆 AERA Award for Best Paper in Measurement and Research Methodologies awarded for A Longitudinal Examination of Working Learners in Higher Education: Findings from the First Year at 2024 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
🏆 Fulbright Research Scholarship awarded for project, A Comparative Study on Working Learners in the United States and Canada, to be taken up at the Pathways Lab at Stanford University from August 2024 to August 2025.
🏆Awarded with the CanStudyUS Fellowship at the Dais at the Toronto Metropolitan University, a leadership development program for scholars and activists with an interest in bi-lateral relations between the United States and Canada.
📝 Conference paper, A Comparative Analysis of Work-Study Programs in the United States and Canada, accepted for presentation at the 2024 Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education Conference in Montreal, Quebec.
📝 Conference paper, Surveying for Racial Equity? Assessing Racial and Ethnic Data Collection Practices in Ontario’s Higher Education, accepted for presentation at the 2024 Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education Conference in Montreal, Quebec.
📝 Conference paper, A Cross-National Comparison of Work-Study Programs, accepted for presentation at the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum 2024 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
📝 Conference paper, A Longitudinal Examination of Working Learners in Higher Education: Findings from the First Year, accepted for presentation at the 2024 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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