St. John completed an Ed.D. in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy at Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1978. During his career as policy researcher with the Missouri Department of Higher Education, the U.S. Department of Education and private research firms, St. John has worked on research supporting policy development and implementation in K-12 and higher education. Recognizing the strong influence of political ideologies on the increasing centralization of policy, he accepted a position as Associate Professor at the University of New Orleans in 1989. At that time his work began to focus on the unintended consequences of federal educational policy and the shift in federal student financial aid from an emphasis on need-based grants to loans. He has also been a professor at the University of Dayton and Indiana University.

As director of the Indiana Education Policy Center, St. John conducted studies informing development of Indiana’s early reading intervention grant program, refinement and funding of Indiana’s Twenty-first Century Scholars Program, and state policy on high school graduation requirements, before initiating the Indiana Project on Academic Success (IPAS) with support from Lumina Foundation and partner universities. IPAS used state data systems on students in K-12 and higher education to examine issues related to preparation, access, and persistence in state institutions and provided technical assistance to universities engaged in new initiatives focused on improving educational attainment for students underrepresented among recipients of college degrees.