She earned her Ph.D. in Higher Education at the University of Georgia. Her research agenda broadly explores higher education policy formulation processes and impacts, especially on populations traditionally underserved in higher education. Her work appears in The Journal of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, and Review of Higher Education, and she is a co-author of the book Outcomes Based Funding and Race in Higher Education: Can Equity be Bought? Dr. Gándara is the recipient of an AERA Research Grant and a dissertation fellowship from the Ford Foundation and the National Academies of Sciences.