Henry M. Levin is the William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and Director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, a non-partisan entity. He is also the David Jacks Professor of Higher Education and Economics, Emeritus, at Stanford University where he served from 1968-99 after working as an economist at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

From 1978-84 he was the Director of the Institute for Research on Educational Finance at Stanford, a federally-funded R. & D. Center. From 1986-2000 Levin served as the Director of the Accelerated Schools Project, a national school reform initiative for accelerating the education of at-risk youngsters encompassing about 1,000 schools in 41 states.

Levin has held Fulbright Professorships in Barcelona and Mexico and is on the Guest Faculty at Beijing University. He has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Russell Sage Foundation. In 1992 the New York Times named him in its special issue on educational reform as one of "nine national leaders in education innovation". Levin has been the Editor of the Review of Educational Research and the President of the Evaluation Research Society and a winner of its Gunnar Myrdal Award. He is also a recipient of the 2004 Outstanding Service Award of the American Educational Finance Association and an elected member of both the National Academy of Education and the International Academy of Education. He has been a member and President of the Palo Alto (CA) School Board and is President-Elect of the Comparative and International Education Society.

Levin is a specialist in the economics of education and human resources and has published 20 books and about 300 articles on these and related subjects. At present he is doing research on educational reform, educational vouchers, cost-effectiveness analysis, costs to society of inadequate education, and educational privatization.