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

Jun 29, 2006 · George Leef

Does America need a National University?

An idea dating from 1789 has recently been resurrected – the creation of a national university for the United States. George Washington proposed exactly that in his first inaugural address and two young idealists have now set up an organization that will push for the creation of such a university.

Writing in the June 16th Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), Chris Myers Asch, chairman of the Campaign for a U.S. Service Academy argues that the U.S. needs to have a national university “designed to cultivate a steady flow of first-rate young leaders dedicated to civic leadership.” (Another article on the subject is available here.) Asch and Shawn Raymond, both of whom taught in the Teach for America program and subsequently founded a non-profit group to provide after-school tutoring to low-income students, are promoting the establishment of a United States Public Service Academy because they think it’s time to “tap into a renewed sense of patriotism and civic obligation among young people.”

Jun 22, 2006 · George Leef

Why college graduates don’t write well

We keep hearing that America’s colleges and universities are the envy of the world, which seems to imply that they impart to students an extremely high level of knowledge and deep, refined skills necessary for success in today’s world. The trouble with that idea is the fact that many students manage to obtain college degrees despite the fact that they don’t even have the basic language and math skills that would have been taken for granted among high school students fifty years ago. Last year’s National Assessment of Adult Literacy report showed that basic literacy of college graduates is low and falling and a new paper released this week by the Pope Center shows that college graduates also have weak writing skills and explains why that is the case.

In “English 101: Prologue to Literacy or Postmodern Moonshine?” retired English professor Nan Miller, who taught writing for twenty-six years, examines the changes in the typical freshman composition course. She laments that those crucial courses are now dominated by “composition theorists.” Miller writes that “Composition is now taught according to their vision, in spite of evidence that shows a sharp decline in literacy among college graduates.” The ideas of the theorists, she contends, “hold students hostage to a bad idea.”

Jun 21, 2006 · George Leef

Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education

People usually wait until they have retired to write books that air a good deal of dirty laundry. Maybe it’s a mark in favor of tenure that a professor who…

Jun 12, 2006 · George Leef

Jim Hunt believes colleges are not measuring up

In a report recently issued by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, former North Carolina governor Jim Hunt and businessman Thomas Tierney address the question “How does American higher education measure up for the 21st century?” Not very well, they conclude.
I happen to think their conclusion is correct, but not for the reasons they give. The difficulty is that Hunt and Tierney are obsessed with the notion that we have a quantity problem. We don’t. We have a quality problem.
The tone for the report is set by former New Mexico governor Garrey Carruthers in his foreword. He states that, due to the demands of the “knowledge-based global economy,” it is imperative that “more Americans must prepare for, enroll in, and successfully complete degree and certificate programs.” Carruthers provides not the tiniest bit of evidence to support his assertion, but this is only the foreword. He calls for government, schools and colleges, and public leaders to “ratchet up the educational level” of the populace.

Jun 1, 2006 · George Leef

Is Ward Churchill an Aberration?

While University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill is infamous and controversial for his assertion that the people killed in the World Trade Center attacks shouldn’t be mourned because they were just “little Eichmanns,” that moronic statement is not at issue in the university’s investigation of him. A professor is just as entitled to say stupid things out of class as a retail clerk is entitled to say stupid things on her free time.

The University of Colorado appointed a team of scholars to investigate allegations that Churchill was guilty of plagiarism and academic fraud. Their findings were very clear: Churchill had indeed committed numerous, flagrant violations of the canons of scholarship. Later this year, the university will decide what penalty to impose.

May 25, 2006 · George Leef

Does UNC need to expand?

When I first saw the email heading – “Could NC Wesleyan become a UNC school?” – I thought it was going to be a joke.

But as I read through the news item, I found out that several members of the General Assembly are quite serious about wanting to have North Carolina Wesleyan College be taken over by the University of North Carolina system. The idea is laughable, but they’re serious.

A provision was included in the Senate budget bill to study (at a cost to the taxpayers of $50,000) the feasibility of bringing this liberal arts college that is affiliated with the United Methodist Church into the big UNC congregation. Why on earth would we want to start ladling public money into a school that has managed quite well for half a century on funds raised from willing donors and students?

May 11, 2006 · George Leef

The Perils of Collegiate Philanthropy

Large donations to colleges and universities have a troubled history, but nothing compares with the legal battle between Princeton University and the Robertson family. This fight has important lessons for anyone who is contemplating a gift to an institution of higher education.

Here’s the background.

Charles Robertson was a Princeton graduate, class of 1926. His wife inherited a fortune through her grandfather, the founder of the A&P grocery chain. In 1961, the Robertsons created the Robertson Foundation and endowed it with $35 million worth of A&P stock. The certificate of incorporation stated the purposes of the Foundation:

“To establish or maintain and support, at Princeton University, and as a part of the Woodrow Wilson School, a Graduate School, where men and women dedicated to public service may prepare themselves for careers in government service, with particular emphasis on the education of such persons for careers in those areas of the Federal Government that are concerned with international relations and affairs….”

Apr 27, 2006 · George Leef

Faculty Pay – Is Higher Education Being “Devalued?”

Each year, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) puts out a study on faculty compensation. This year’s study takes on a somewhat alarmist tone. Its title, “The Devaluing of Higher Education”suggests that there is some ominous trend at work that could make “faculty positions less appealing for the next generation of scholars.”

The difficulty, according to the AAUP researcher, is that in 2005-06, average faculty salaries increased less than the rate of inflation. While average gross pay rose by 3.1 percent, inflation (measured by the Consumer Price Index) increased by 3.4 percent. That’s a pretty small erosion of purchasing power and since the inflation rate was unexpectedly high – it had been around 2.5 percent for several years – it’s hard to see this as a serious “devaluing” of higher education. Rather, it looks like a minor bump in the road. The study doesn’t say whether there have been years when average faculty compensation exceeded the rate of inflation, but that has undoubtedly occurred.

Apr 20, 2006 · George Leef

Is it Possible to Reduce College Costs?

The Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education recently released several studies. One of them, written by Robert C. Dickeson, deals with perhaps the most frequently discussed college topic of all – does it have to cost so much?

Higher education is very labor-intensive, so if you want to find ways to lower costs, labor is the first place to look.

Dickeson points to tenure as being one reason why labor costs are higher than they need to be. The decision to grant tenure, he notes, carries with it a price tag that often exceeds $1 million. Its effect is to reduce institutional flexibility in two ways. First, if student interest in a field declines, the school can’t readily adjust; it’s stuck with a tenured professor even if students aren’t enrolling in his courses any more. Second, a tenured professor who is no longer effective – someone who is just coasting along, putting forth a minimal effort for his students – is hard to remove. Although tenure is not an absolute job guarantee, trying to remove a professor with tenure is a costly, time-consuming task that many administrators don’t want to try.

Apr 6, 2006 · George Leef

What should we do about college accreditation?

College accreditation is a little-understood aspect of our system of higher education. Most people don’t know how it operates, but believe that accreditation is a guarantee of reasonably good educational quality.

Sadly, that is far from the truth. A college or university can be accredited and yet offer pathetically weak academic programs. A recent report issued by the U.S. Department of Labor tears into the accreditation system with surprising frankness.

In “The Need for Accreditation Reform,” Robert C. Dickeson begins by explaining that “The standards for accreditation…are based on an institution’s self-study of the extent to which the institution feels it has met its own purposes.” Since college and university mission statements are never couched in precise language about educational results, that means that accrediting bodies don’t focus on questions pertaining to the central point of college life (what do students learn?) but rather on peripheral matters.