Speaker biographies

Paul Fain is a staff reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education, where he has covered university leaders since 2004, including college costs, federal tax policy, and presidential searches. As the primary author of the Chronicle’s annual executive compensation survey, Mr. Fain is a widely quoted source on presidential salaries and the job market for college leaders. He has won national and state awards during his reporting career, including a 2006 Education Writers Association award for beat reporting. Prior to joining the Chronicle, Mr. Fain wrote for C-Ville Weekly in Charlottesville, Virginia. He has also been a regular contributor to the Philadelphia City Paper and the Washington City Paper.

Vance H. Fried is the Brattain Professor of Entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University. In addition to his current work on entrepreneurship in higher education, his research focuses on the venture capital industry and the management of firms financed by venture capital. He has published in several major journals, including Academy of Management Perspectives, California Management Review, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Federal Communications Law Journal, Financial Management, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Small Business Management, and Journal of Private Equity. Prior to joining the faculty at Oklahoma State, Mr. Fried worked as an attorney in private practice, as a executive at an independent oil company, and as an investment banker working with small- and mid-cap companies.

Doug Lederman is a founder of Inside Higher Ed. With Scott Jaschik, he leads the editorial operations of Inside Higher Ed, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, blogs, and other interactive features. Mr. Lederman speaks widely on higher education, as appearing on C-SPAN and NPR, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, the Nieman Foundation Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Princeton Alumni Weekly. He was managing editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education from 1999 to 2003. Before that, he had worked at the Chronicle since 1986 in a variety of roles, first as an athletics reporter and editor. Mr. Lederman’s work at the Chronicle won two National Awards for Education Reporting from the Education Writers Association. He began his career as a news clerk at the New York Times.

Daniel Levy is a distinguished professor at the University at Albany, SUNY. He directs the Ford Foundation–funded Program for Research on Private Higher Education, a leading research center in its field with an international network of some thirty researchers. Mr. Levy’s seven books have been published by the university presses at California, Chicago, Indiana, Oxford, and Pittsburgh, as well as with Praeger and Westview. His articles appear in an array of professional journals. Starting at Yale University’s two pioneering research programs on higher education and non-profit organizations, Mr. Levy has spent more than twenty-five years researching how educational institutions engage with civil society and government. He is a frequent consultant for international foundations, development banks, for-profit agencies, and academic agencies.

Jane McAuliffe is the president of Ashford University. Her professional career began as a special education teacher in both public and private K-12 schools. Prior to her appointment at Ashford, she was president of the Sarasota campus of Argosy University in Sarasota, Florida. Ms. McAuliffe previously held various positions at Argosy University, including vice president for academic affairs in Sarasota and department head for education in Atlanta. Her experience also includes serving as vice president for academic affairs at American InterContinental University and dean, associate dean, and program chair in the College of Education at the University of Phoenix. She is the coauthor of one book and has given numerous scholarly presentations.

Mark Pelesh is the executive vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs at Corinthian Colleges. Prior to joining Corinthian, Mr. Pelesh was a partner in the Washington law firm of Drinker Biddle & Reath from 1997 to 2003, where he founded and led the firm’s education law group. His work with Drinker Biddle & Reath encompassed dealing with Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, and many state authorities, as well as the representation of accrediting agencies. He also participated in the Department of Education’s negotiated rulemaking procedures. From 1981 to 1997, Mr. Pelesh was with the law firm of Cohn and Marks, where he helped establish the firm’s education practice and served on its management committee. Mr. Pelesh’s articles on the legal issues surrounding education have been published in law reviews at Duke and Notre Dame and for the National Association of College and University Attorneys, among other publications.

Andrew S. Rosen is the president and chief operating officer of Kaplan, Inc., and he also serves as CEO of Kaplan Higher Education, which offers postsecondary education to 80,000 students in the United States and Europe. Over the past decade, Mr. Rosen has been instrumental in helping Kaplan grow from a $195 million test prep company in 1998 to a diversified educational company with more than $2 billion in revenue in 2007. Under his leadership, Kaplan Higher Education has become Kaplan’s largest division. Mr. Rosen has led Kaplan’s efforts in the burgeoning online education market. Its online components include Kaplan University; Concord Law School of Kaplan University, the nation’s first fully online law school; and Kaplan Virtual Education, which offers online high school programs. Mr. Rosen came to the Washington Post Company in 1986 as a staff attorney for the Washington Post. He is currently on the boards of Enterprise Florida, the Broward Workshop, the Broward Alliance, and the Council for Educational Change.

Richard Vedder is a distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, a visiting scholar at AEI, and the director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. He is the author of numerous books, including most recently The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big-Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy (with Wendell Cox; AEI Press, 2006), Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much (AEI Press, 2004) and Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America (with Lowell Gallaway; NYU Press, 1997). He also has held a number of visiting appointments, including serving as an economist with the Joint Economic Committee. Mr. Vedder is also the author of numerous scholarly papers for journals in economics and public policy, as well as shorter pieces for the popular press, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, Education Next, Cato Journal, The American Enterprise, Society, and Forbes.

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