Office of Sustainability
University of Wisconsin–Madison

Karl Scholz

Position title: Former Provost and Professor of Economic Policy

Karl Scholz headshot

John Karl Scholz began serving as Provost in August 2019 after six years as the Dean of the College of Letters & Science at UW–Madison. Scholz is also the Nellie June Gray Professor of Economic Policy in the Department of Economics, which he joined in 1988.

From 1997-98, Scholz was the deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department, and from 1990-91 he was a senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisors. Scholz directed the Institute for Research on Poverty at UW–Madison from 2000-2004.

Professor Scholz is an internationally respected economist whose work on household saving, low-wage labor markets, financial barriers to higher education, and bankruptcy has appeared in leading economics journals.