Chester E. Finn Jr.

Chester E. Finn Jr., a former assistant secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Chester E. Finn Jr. has been involved in national education for 35 years. Currently, Finn serves as president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and is senior editor of Education Next. He is also a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and chairman of Hoover’s Koret Task Force on K-12 education. Previously, he served as a professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University, counsel to the U.S. ambassador to India, legislative director for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and assistant U.S. secretary of education for research and improvement. He holds a doctorate from Harvard in education policy.

The author of 19 books and more than 400 articles, Finn’s work has appeared in The Weekly Standard, Christian Science Monitor, Commentary, The Public Interest, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Education Week, Harvard Business Review, and The Boston Globe. Finn is the recipient of awards from the Educational Press Association of America, Choice magazine, the Education Writers Association, and the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. He holds an honorary doctorate from Colgate University. He and his wife, Renu Virmani, a physician, have two grown children and three granddaughters. They live in Chevy Chase MD.

Latest

  4. The Trouble With Professors

    Can faculty members be trusted to put the larger aims of their institutions ahead of narrow self-interest, particularly when the issue is job security or curriculum reform? No, said former Bennington College president Gail Thain Parker in the September Atlantic. What follows is a sampling of responses to that article, from some educators who share Parker’s gloomy vision, and from some who don’t.

    Joseph S. Iseman, Gail Thain Parker, Gerhard D. Bleicken, George W. Bonham, Richard Chait, Harold Howe Ii, Chester E. Finn Jr., Glenn T. Wilson, Paul R. Harrison, and Howard R. Bowen

  5. Paying for College

    Many independent colleges and universities will have to shut down unless new sources of funding are found. This problem, argued Boston University President John Silber in the May Atlantic, is related to the rapid growth of statesupported university systems, generously financed by tax dollars and duplicating, on occasion, facilities and programs already available at the independent schools. What follows is a sampling of the many responses to President Silber’s article — most of them edited for reasons of space and variety.

    Joseph Dufeey, Daniel P. Moynihan, Janet F. Upjohn, Paul Parks, Merrimon Cuninggim, Alexander Heard, Lamar Soutter, Harold Howe Ii, Howard R. Bowen, Chester E. Finn Jr., James M. Howell, and Adam Yarmolinsky