Craig Brandon’s The Five-Year Party makes me think of reheated coffee: sometimes necessary but always bitter, acidic, and thin. A former journalism professor at Keene State, New Hampshire, Brandon has assiduously collected bad new and bad results throughout higher education in order to populate this book. He weaves together the negativity into an extraordinarily bleak…
Month: February 2011
Poor Options, Smart Choices
If, sadly, a twenty-two year old is killed by a bus, the news media will quickly report the untimely demise of a man. Ask a group of middle-aged Americans about a twenty-two year old who lacks a full-time job and lives in his parent’s house, and they would be unwilling to call that person an…
I Read a Good Book and Wondered Why
Arguments on behalf of the liberal arts are borne, more often than not, out of fear. “The liberal arts are under attack!” academicians decry, faced with budget cuts and the vagaries of student enrollment trends. People do not understand their importance, it is claimed, with a tone whose undercurrent is condescending. The most popular major…