Books on higher education and class

Review:

Scandals of Higher Education

By Andrew Delbanco, The New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 5 (March 29, 2007)

Books Discussed in This Article:

Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education by William G. Bowen, Martin A. Kurzweil, and Eugene M. Tobin, in collaboration with Susanne C. Pichler

The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates by Daniel Golden

The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality by Walter Benn Michaels

Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education by Harry R. Lewis

Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More by Derek Bok

Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning in America by Donald N. Levine

1.

On the Tuesday before last Thanksgiving, The Harvard Crimson ran a protest article by a sophomore majoring in economics. His cause was the abolition of classes for the whole of Thanksgiving week. Since few students like to stick around past the weekend before the holiday, he wrote, Harvard ought to follow Yale in ending its "anti-family-friendly policy" of remaining officially in session through Wednesday. It did not occur to him that making a round-trip home shortly before leaving campus again for Christmas break might pose a financial hardship for some of his classmates.^[1]

The facts bear him out. Ninety percent of Harvard students come from families earning more than the median national income of $55,000, and Harvard's dean of admissions was quoted in the Crimson a few months earlier defining "middle-income" Harvard families as those earning between $110,000 and $200,000. For these students, and certainly for their many wealthier classmates, it should be no problem to fly home, or, better yet, to hop over to Cancun or Barbados.

It is hardly surprising that lots of rich kids go to America's richest colleges. It has always been so. But today's students are richer on average than their predecessors. Between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, in a sample of eleven prestigious colleges, the percentage of students from families in the bottom quartile of national family income remained roughly steady— around 10 percent. During the same period the percentage of students from the top quartile rose sharply, from a little more than one third to fully half. If the upscale shops and restaurants near campus are any indication, the trend has continued if not accelerated. And if the sample is broadened to include the top 150 colleges, the percentage of students from the bottom quartile drops to 3 percent.^[2] In short, there are very few poor students at America's top colleges, and a large and growing number of rich ones.

 

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Jodi Picoult writing Wonder Woman? Weird.

Finally, DC Comics has recruited a bestselling female writer to write Wonder Woman.  The five-issue run by novelist Jodi Picoult, author of fourteen novels including Plain Truth and My Sister’s Keeper, debuts tomorrow on Wonder Woman #6. 

DC teams Picoult with current artists Terry and Rachel Dodson, and Drew Johnson, who also worked on fan-favorite Greg Rucka’s Wonder Woman run.  The anticipation among Wonder Woman and Picoult fans alike is palpable, so it was a real treat when Picoult made time in her busy schedule to answer a few questions about the Wonder Woman we all know and love.

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