Author Profile

George Leef

George Leef is director of external relations for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from Carroll College (Waukesha, WI) and a juris doctor from Duke University School of Law. He was a vice president of the John Locke Foundation until 2003.

Prior to joining the Locke Foundation, Leef was president of Patrick Henry Associates, a consulting firm in Michigan dedicated to assisting others in advocating free markets, minimal government, private property, and individual rights. Previously, Leef was on the faculty of Northwood University in Midland, Michigan, where he taught courses in economics, business law, and logic. He has also worked as a policy adviser in the Michigan Senate.

A regular columnist for Forbes.com, Leef was book review editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education, from 1996 to 2012. He has published numerous articles in The Freeman, Reason, The Free Market, Cato Journal, The Detroit News, Independent Review, and Regulation. He writes regularly for the National Review's The Corner blog and for SeethruEdu.com.

Articles by George Leef

Offer to help, get your hand chewed off

Dec 8, 2006 ·

Recently the new dean of the school of humanities, arts, and sciences at NC State asked to meet with Art Pope, who heads the John W. Pope Foundation. The Foundation has given substantial financial assistance to higher education in North Carolina over the years and Dean Toby Parcel wanted to see if it would be possible to arrange additional support, particularly for foreign language programs.

The meeting was cordial and productive. Afterward, however, when Dean Parcel reported to her faculty on the prospect of Pope Foundation support, many members threw the adult version of a tantrum. One professor declaimed that money from the Pope Foundation was “dirty money” that would corrupt the university. Another opined that taking money from the Pope Foundation would be as bad as taking money from the Ku Klux Klan.

Gary Becker and Richard Posner Discuss Student Aid Programs

Dec 5, 2006 ·

Two famous University of Chicago professors, Gary S. Becker and Richard A. Posner have a blog on which a great variety of topics come up for discussion. Becker is the 1992 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and Posner is a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals who has written many books in the field of law and economics. In an exchange posted on December 3, they traded thoughts on the proposals floating in Washington for making student loan programs less costly.

What is The National Survey of Student Engagement Telling Us?

Nov 21, 2006 ·

Concern that American college students may not be learning much during their years in school is not new; nor is it confined to think tanks like the Pope Center. Back in 1999, the Pew Charitable Trusts made a grant to Indiana University to develop a means of probing the question of student achievement. What emerged was the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), a program designed to measure the extent to which students are active participants in their education. If there is evidence that students are really engaged in their college work, that is at least indicative of educational progress – and vice versa.

NSSE accumulates data by sending a questionnaire to a large number of college freshmen and seniors. For the 2006 survey, more than one million were sent to students in the US and Canada. The schools those students attend range from the most prestigious to the least. Institutions, however, have to choose to participate and not all do. In North Carolina, all of the UNC campuses participated, along with 24 of the independent colleges and universities. (The two best-known of the independents, Duke and Wake Forest, chose not to participate.) Results are based on approximately 260,000 randomly selected responses.

The University of Illinois’ Global Campus Initiative

Nov 16, 2006 ·

Online education has largely been treated like a stepchild in the world of higher education. It gets a bit of food and some old clothes, but not much attention in comparison with the university’s real children. A new online initiative begun by the University of Illinois, however, may give this Cinderella a more prominent place than it has had before.

Announced last May, the Global Campus Initiative (GCI) is a remarkable university undertaking that should give online education more prominence. What’s more, the GCI is intended to be a profit-making venture and the startup capital will be raised from private sources. The tuition paid by students – and no breaks for Illinois residents – are expected to cover all costs. Implicitly, Illinois is saying, “We think we have an educational product that will pass the test of the market.” Very interesting, especially since several high-profile online education ventures have failed.

Some Further Questions about Diversity

Oct 12, 2006 ·

Will a diverse college campus – where “diverse” means that there is at least a “critical mass” of students and faculty members who are regarded as being members of certain “underrepresented” groups – lead to better results than if the school did not make any effort at being “diverse?” In my previous Clarion Call essay, I looked at the argument that diversity is beneficial because it causes people to better relate to one another. I didn’t find that argument very persuasive. What I want to do here is to examine some other arguments that have been advanced as justifying the hiring and admission preferences that are integral to the diversity movement.

Globalization

The first argument is that diversity helps prepare American students for the diverse and increasingly globalized world they will live and work in. A “diverse” campus is therefore good preparation for the future. A college that failed to give its students that preparation would be remiss, wouldn’t it?

Some Questions about Diversity

Oct 5, 2006 ·

The Pope Center’s 2006 conference, set for October 14 will focus on the much-discussed topic of diversity in higher education. Coincidentally, The Chronicle of Higher Education recently devoted an entire 40 page section to diversity, packed with articles on diversity and advertisements by schools large and small touting their commitment to diversity. A reader with no familiarity with American higher education would probably conclude that having more “diversity” is an unquestioned good – that one would no more ask if it’s beneficial to have more diversity than one would ask it’s beneficial to have better health. Not once in the entire section (and very rarely in anything written about higher education) is there a hint of skepticism about the diversity movement.

There is something odd about the insistent adulation of diversity. Individuals don’t usually tell themselves, “I’d be better off with more diversity in my life. I’m going to listen to all the different kinds of music available, not just the stuff I’ve been enjoying. I’m also going to have more diversity in my diet, eating many kinds of food I don’t normally eat.” Of course, we sometimes choose to try something new – a country-western fan could tune into a Met broadcast because a friend said that she might enjoy the music in The Marriage of Figaro – but that isn’t the same as a determination that a more diverse array of music would necessarily be better.

Just What Do Students Learn?

Sep 28, 2006 ·

Getting a college education is frequently touted as the passport to a prosperous and successful life. Americans are apt to believe that college coursework does a great job of building up “human capital,” without which young people will be limited to menial “burger flipping” kinds of work.

It is becoming increasingly plain, however, that many college students don’t gain much at all when it comes to skills and knowledge that count in the job market. College grads who read and write poorly, can’t do elementary math problems, and wind up in low-paying jobs they could have done while in high school are a sad fact of life.

Higher Education has been Oversold

Sep 7, 2006 ·

It was just this time of year – the beginning of a new academic year – in 1980, when it first occurred to me that higher education in America had been oversold.

I was new to the college teaching ranks and didn’t know just what to expect from students. A few days earlier, I had handed out copies of a chapter from a book that I wanted the students to read and be prepared to discuss. It was an 8-page assignment.

Once the class began and I asked some questions about the assignment, it became evident that few (if any) of the students had done the reading — or if they had read it, they hadn’t bothered to make sure they understood it. After several tries at jump starting a discussion, one student put up his hand and I eagerly called on him.

He said, “Couldn’t you, you know, just tell us the main point?”

Inquiry Paper No. 25: The Overselling of Higher Education

Sep 5, 2006 ·

A paper published by the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy argues that higher education has been oversold to the public. Many students who are not really interested in academic pursuits are spending a lot of time and money to get a credential that is much less valuable than they suppose.

The paper was written by George Leef, vice president for research, and focuses on many of the common themes that dominate higher education policy today.

The Student Fee System Sets a Bad Example

Aug 24, 2006 ·

The new college school year has begun and the many student groups either have held or soon will hold their initial meetings. There is nothing objectionable about students with like interests getting together to pursue them, any more than for residents of a subdivision who like playing bridge, for example, to get together for a few hands. Unfortunately, student groups don’t rely entirely on money that comes from willing participants and there is something objectionable about that.

At each of the institutions of the UNC system, students are assessed, in addition to their payments for tuition, mandatory “student activity fees.” Some of the money thus collected goes toward the expense of running the student union, student TV and radio stations and similar services that are available to all and would be difficult to charge for on an individual basis. The rest of the money is distributed by the school’s student congress to various campus groups that have requested funding.