Slacking: Wandering Through the Ivies

(Hardback)

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Don't trust the Ivy League to produce well-educated students. Sticker prices of $80,000-plus buy prestige but not knowledge or wisdom. Just read the course descriptions.

Cornell has "transgender animal studies," Cardi B, and "intersectional disability studies." Yale has "pop sapphism" and "comparative settler geographies." Penn has "reality TV and gender" and "decolonizing French food." Princeton has "shoes."

All these courses meet general education requirements.

A generation ago, the question was: Do the great universities still require Shakespeare, Western Civilization, and American history The answer was, increasingly, no. Today, the question is: Do the great universities still offer even one worthwhile course on Shakespeare, Western Civ, and U.S. history

The answer is: yes, barely.

Serious students can still get a great education at Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Penn, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, or Dartmouth, but they have to work for it. This book provides strivers with the information they need to get the education they deserve. A content-rich, classical education remains available if they know what to look for.

Columbia is the exception-maybe. But if its courses are so good, why were the encampments there so imprudent and immature

Each chapter ends with a Tale of Two Cornells. If a dedicated slacker wants to skate through the requirements for entertainment, reinforcement of political biases, and narrow specialization, it's easy to choose poorly. If a striver wants the opposite, it takes effort to choose well.

The contrast provides a stark wake-up call for curriculum reform at America's best-known colleges.

Make college great again!

Author Bio

Adam Kissel is a visiting fellow for higher education reform at the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, chairman of the West Virginia Professional Charter School Board, senior fellow at the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy, and a board member at Southern Wesleyan University, the National Association of Scholars, The Philadelphia Society, and Love Your School. He serves on the America 250 Advisory Council on Civics, History, and America's Future. A proud graduate of the University of Chicago and an embarrassed graduate of Harvard College, he served in the first Trump administration under Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos as deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs. He was a vice president at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and senior program officer at the Charles Koch Foundation. He is a member of Randolph Street Baptist Church in Charleston, West Virginia. Madison Marino Doan is a Senior Research Associate in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Her work focuses on higher education reform regarding affordability and accountability. She also writes on K-12 education choice initiatives. Doan is also a visiting fellow with the Maryland Family Institute, where she writes and comments on issues related to education choice, parental rights, and local education. Before this, she served in multiple roles for U.S. Congressman Brian Babin (TX-36), most recently as Legislative Correspondent, and managed his religious freedom and values portfolio. Her work may be found in Fox News, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, The Daily Signal, the Educational Freedom Institute, and more. She graduated summa cum laude from Lamar University with a double major in Economics and Finance and has a certificate in Humanizing Education Policy from the Pepperdine School of Public Policy. Rachel Alexander Cambre is a visiting fellow in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Politics and the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, where her research focuses on classical and liberal arts education and American political thought. A graduate of Washington and Lee University and Baylor University, where she received her PhD in political science in 2019, she has held teaching and research postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton University and the University of Virginia.