What's gone wrong at our colleges and universities-and how to get American higher education back on track A quarter of a million dollars. It's the going tab for four years at most top-tier universities. Why does it cost so much and is it worth it? Renowned sociologist Andrew Hacker and New York Times writer Claudia Dreifus make an incisive case that the American way of higher education, now a $420 billion-per-year business, has lost sight of its primary mission: the education of young adults. Going behind the myths and mantras, they probe the true performance of the Ivy League, the baleful influence of tenure, an unhealthy reliance on part-time teachers, and the supersized bureaucracies which now have a life of their own. As Hacker and Dreifus call for a thorough overhaul of a self-indulgent system, they take readers on a road trip from Princeton to Evergreen State to Florida Gulf Coast University, revealing those faculties and institutions that are getting it right and proving that teaching and learning can be achieved-and at a much more reasonable price.
"[A] blistering attack on American colleges and universities... Don't read this book the night before you drive the little darling to that pricey private college, because you might cancel the trip."
USA Today
"Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus have written a lucid, passionate and wide-ranging book on the state of American higher education and what they perceive as its increasing betrayal of its primary mission. . . . In a series of well-structured and strongly argued chapters, the book [poses] searching and sometimes troubling questions."
The New York Times
"A powerful indictment of academic careerism. The authors are not shy about making biting judgments along the way… Higher education may be heading for a reckoning."
