Making College Right: Heretical Thoughts & Practical Proposals, (Paperback)

American higher education faces an array of major problems, including skyrocketing tuition, mania over college rankings, the crass commercialiam of big-time sports, controversial admissions preference for certain groups, a basic liberal arts curriculum that fails to do its job and increasingly shifts the responsibility to high schools, to name only some. Yet the powers in control -- colleges nationwide, along with U.S. NEWS magazine, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and the College Board -- fail to make essential changes. Instead they present a facade of rationalizations and misinformation to justify unsound practices. WILLIAM CASEMENT confronts this situation as both a professional philosopher and successful businessman whose perspective is unique. MAKING COLLEGE RIGHT cuts through the public persona of the higher education establishment, exposing each faulty argument in turn, then applies common sense principles for setting our nation's colleges on a proper course. Included are proposals for inducing colleges to lower tuition, creating a far better ranking system, the full professionalization of Division I sports, and major revision of the core curriculum, among others. The book's engaging "straight talk" style makes it appropriate for a broad audience.