John Sawyer, former associate provost for Institutional Research and Effectiveness at the University of Delaware, passed away on March 22, 2025. The Higher Education Consortia, along with the entire University of Delaware community, mourns his passing and celebrates his long-lasting contributions to the field of higher education. As a business administration professor in the Lerner College of Business and Economics and as an administrator at the University of Delaware, Dr. Sawyer had a lasting impact on the university community as well as the broader field of higher education.

One significant contribution was his establishment of the Higher Education Consortia in 2016 as the organizing structure responsible for advancing The Cost Study and the use of its data in academic research. His intellectual and administrative contributions allowed the study to evolve into an invaluable asset in higher education decision-making. As the associate provost of IRE, Dr. Sawyer also served as an ex officio member of the HEC Advisory Board.

Under Dr. Sawyer’s guidance, HEC collaborated with economists from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan on a groundbreaking project funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences.

From this research, Dr. Sawyer co-authored the paper “Why Is Math Cheaper than English? Understanding Cost Differences in Higher Education” with Steven W. Hemelt, Kevin M. Stange, Fernando Furquim, and Andrew Simon, which was published in the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2018 (and republished in the Journal of Labor Economics in 2021). Their work received national interest and was referenced in several media publications.

HEC’s collaboration with this team led to additional projects and partnerships with academic researchers and higher ed organizations.

The University of Delaware, HEC, and the higher education community will forever be impacted by Dr. Sawyer’s legacy.

For more on Dr. Sawyer’s contribution to the university, read the In Memoriam in UDaily.