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

Sep 8, 2005 · George Leef

Is it necessary for everyone to go to college?

Fifty years ago, college education was sold to students as a way of broadening their intellectual horizons. The curriculum was filled with courses in literature, philosophy, history and so on. If you were looking for job training, that was mostly found in the job market itself, or at technical institutes and community colleges.

Strangely, the situation has changed almost 180 degrees. Today most people look to higher education for job training (or at least preparation) and great numbers of students believe that without a college degree, they will be unemployable in all but menial labor. At the same time, the old idea that the purpose of a college education is to broaden one’s intellectual horizons has been largely relegated to the broom closet. True, quite a few institutions still pay lip service to the importance of a liberal education, but in fact it is quite easy for students at most of them to earn a BA without taking any of the kind of courses that used to be the pillars of the curriculum. Students who want to learn about, say, philosophy or history would be better off looking for a good lecture series on tape than looking through the course catalogue.

Aug 18, 2005 · George Leef

When is a Student from Ohio Really a North Carolinian?

In one of the strangest state budget provisions in years, if a student from Ohio (or any other state or even a foreign country) is awarded a full scholarship to attend one of the campuses of the UNC system, then that student can be officially counted as being a North Carolina resident. What is going on? Why say that a kid with a New Jersey driver’s license is a North Carolinian?

The answer is that this bit of definitional legerdemain is designed to evade the long-standing cap on out-of-state residents who may enroll in the state university system. Under state law, UNC campuses cannot enroll more than 18 percent of their students from non-residents. Since the taxpayers of the state put up most of the money to operate the UNC system, the argument goes, most of the places for students ought to be reserved for students whose parents pay taxes into the state treasury.

Jun 24, 2005 · George Leef

The Perils of Annoying the Diversicrats

Last week, a federal court in Kansas ruled that the administration at Kansas State University did not violate the First Amendment rights of a journalism professor who was fired from his position as adviser to the school’s student newspaper. It’s an amazing case that shows the extent to which school administrators will go in order to appease the campus diversity crowd once it decides to feel aggrieved.

Professor Ron Johnson had for many years been the faculty adviser to the Kansas State Collegian, a student newspaper that had received an award in 2004 as the best daily college newspaper in a national competition. Alas, he and the students committed an unpardonable sin of omission. The paper failed to cover an event on campus. Of course, there are lots of events at a large university like K-State, so what’s the big deal about failing to write about one of them?

Jun 17, 2005 · George Leef

A New MBA Program That’s “Outside the Box”

For half a century, Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs have been a growth industry in the U.S. In 1955-56, only 3,200 MBA degrees were awarded. But in the 1960s, the numbers started to climb; in 1998, more than 102,000 MBA degrees were awarded. MBA programs have sprouted up in colleges and universities great and small as administrators sought to cash in on the increasingly prevalent idea that MBA studies were very useful if not essential for success in many business fields.

The trouble is that in trying to cater to a mass market, many programs offer an education that is of little practical value. In a September 2002 article in the Academy of Management Learning & Education, authors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Christina Fong observe that “possessing an MBA neither guarantees business success nor prevents business failure” and point out that the nation’s top business consulting firms often hire people who have degrees other than an MBA. They quote a Stanford MBA who regards the curriculum as “irrelevant” and believes that students get “a pedigree rather than learning.”

May 20, 2005 · George Leef

What UNC needs in a president

The University of North Carolina system is hunting for a new president. Molly C. Broad, the current president, has announced her resignation and a committee of 13 distinguished individuals has been given the task of selecting her successor.

Perhaps it’s just public relations, but the committee has scheduled “town hall” meetings around the state this month to hear from people who have ideas on this matter. I have some definite ideas about the characteristics of the person the search committee should choose.

May 16, 2005 · George Leef

What UNC needs in a president

First, the individual must have an overriding commitment to academic integrity. Of course, every candidate is going to pay lip service to academics. The tough job will be to get through the rhetorical smokescreen to find out if it’s just talk.

May 13, 2005 · George Leef

How Much Does a State University Have to Cost?

Every state has a state university system, although that was not always the case. (New York didn’t begin the SUNY system until after World War II, a fact that did not impede the state’s growth and prosperity.) Looking at the financing of those university systems, however, you find great differences in the degree to which they depend on government appropriations. Some states rely heavily on state funding, whereas others have chosen to constrict the money pipeline from the state capital to the universities and depend more on voluntary support.

I was interested in knowing just where North Carolina stands, so the Pope Center did an analysis of the financial data for each state found in the 2004 Almanac Issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

May 11, 2005 · George Leef

Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus

Independent Institute and Cambridge University Press, 2005, 279 pp., $28.99 American colleges and universities are hothouses of hypocrisy and the principal exhibit is the fact that while their spokesmen talk…

· George Leef

Free Speech on College Campuses

American colleges and universities are hothouses of hypocrisy and the principal exhibit is the fact that while their spokesmen talk endlessly about their commitment to openness, tolerance, critical thinking, diversity,…

May 6, 2005 · George Leef

Crying wolf on higher education

In a May 1 column in The Oklahoman, University of Oklahoma president David Boren sent up a loud cry of “Wolf!” over the prospect that Oklahoma may do what quite a few other states are doing – shifting some of the burden of paying for the state university system from the taxpayers to students and other parties who are willing to donate money. Mr. Boren finds this “alarming” because it “threatens to close the door of opportunity.”