His first teaching post was at Iowa State College. In 1943 he became a professor at the University of Chicago and in the space of a decade published four critical books on US agricultural programmes, leading up to a major textbook on agricultural economics, The Economic Organization of Agriculture (1953).

Schultz was born in Arlington, South Dakota, in a German farming community. He studied agricultural economics at South Dakota State College, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1926. Moving for postgraduate work to the University of Wisconsin, he completed a master's degree in 1928 and a doctorate in 1930.

He was president of the American Economic Association in 1961, won the Francis A Walker Medal of the Association in 1972, and the Leonard Elmhirst Medal of the International Agricultural Economic Association in 1976. After retirement in 1974, he remained active as a consultant to UN Specialized Agencies.

His works include The Economic Value of Education (1963), Transforming Traditional Agriculture (1964), Economic Growth and Agriculture (1968), Restoring Economic Equilibrium: Human Capital in the Modernizing Economy (1990), and Origins of Increasing Returns (1993).