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Levin Honored by Maastricht University
Henry M. Levin, TC's William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education, was one of six people who recently received an honorary doctorate from Maastricht University in the Netherlands.
Levin is “one of the founders of the evidence-based education approach,” which emphasizes that “‘science for policy’ should be based on the best available scientific evidence,” writes Henriette Maassen van den Brink, Professor of Evidence Based Education at Maastricht and Director of the Top Institute for Evidence Based Education Research, in the January 2011 issue of Maastrich University Magazine. “Professor Levin’s teaching style mirrors his research practice: he focuses not on the technical sophistication or novelty of the research but on its more straightforward meaning in the real world.”
Levin is the founding director of both the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education and the Center for Benefit Cost Studies of Education. In the early 1970s, he prepared a major report for a Senate sub-committee, chaired by future U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale, on the costs to the United States of inadequate education. In 2005, he chaired a major symposium at TC, “The Social Costs of Inadequate Education,” which presented evidence that the lifetime earnings loss associated with dropping out of high school is $260,000. Two years later, he led a study that found that U.S. taxpayers could reap $45 billion in annual savings if the number of high school dropouts were cut in half using five proven educational strategies. The savings would be achieved via extra tax revenues, reduced costs of public health, crime and justice, and decreased welfare payments.
Levin is the author of numerous books, including Privatizing Educational Choice, co-authored with Clive Belfield. Belfield, and Cost-Effectiveness and Educational Policy, co-edited with Patrick J. McEwan. From 1986-2000, Levin served as the Director of the Accelerated Schools Project, national school reform initiative for accelerating the education of at-risk youngsters. At its height, the project reached more than 1,000 Accelerated elementary and secondary schools in some 40 states, with 50 schools in Hong Kong.
In 1992 Levin received the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Contributions to Education.
Receiving honorary doctorates along with Levin were Alfred Goldberg, Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School; Philip Alston, John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University; A. Parsu Parasuraman, Professor of Marketing and James W. McLamore Chair at the University of Miami’s School of Business Administration; Beate Kohler-Koch, Emeritus Professor of International Relatinos and European Integration, of the University of Mannheim; and Kamil Ugurbil, Professor, Department of Radiology, Neuroscience and Medicine, and holder of the McKnight Preside3ntial Endowed Chair of Radiology at the University of Minnesota.
Published Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2011
