XX. Gottfried von Haberler Conference
Guest Speakers: James Tooley

James Tooley, a native of UK holds a PhD from the University of London, an MSc from the University of Sussex, and first-class BSc honors in Logic and Mathematics, also from the University of Sussex. Until January 2026, Tooley served as Vice-Chancellor at the University of Buckingham the UK’s premier private university. His previous academic appointments were at the Universities of Oxford, Manchester and Newcastle as well as at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London and Simon Fraser University in Canada. Tooley’s groundbreaking research on low-cost private education has won numerous awards, including a gold prize in the first International Finance Corporation/Financial Times Private Sector Development Competition and a Templeton Prize for Free Market Solutions to Poverty. His book “The Beautiful Tree: A personal journey into how the world’s poorest are educating themselves” (2009), was a best-seller in India and won the Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Prize.

His work has featured in documentaries on American PBS television and the BBC. Among his many books, only The Global Education Industry (2001), E. G. West: Economic Liberalism and the Role of Government in Education (2008), and Imprisoned in India: Corruption and Extortion in the World’s Largest Democracy (2016) can be mentioned here. He is currently working on a book The Beautiful Tree in America, about the parallel movement of low-tuition alternatives to public schooling in the US.