In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic [Hardcover]

Professor X (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 31, 2011

A caustic expose of the deeply state of our colleges-America's most expensive Ponzi scheme.

What drives a former English major with a creative writing degree, several unpublished novels, three kids, and a straining marriage to take a job as a night teacher at a second-rate college? An unaffordable mortgage.

As his house starts falling apart in every imaginable way, Professor X grabs first one, then two jobs teaching English 101 and 102-composition and literature-at a small private college and a local community college. He finds himself on the front lines of America's academic crisis. It's quite an education.

This is the story of what he learns about his struggling pupils, about the college system-a business more bent on its own financial targets than the wellbeing of its students-about the classics he rediscovers, and about himself. Funny, wry, self-deprecating, and a provocative indictment of our failing schools, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower is both a brilliant academic satire and a poignant account of one teacher's seismic frustration-and unlikely salvation-as his real estate woes catapult him into a subprime crisis of an altogether more human nature.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Professor X has been teaching English composition and literature for a decade at two small colleges somewhere in America. His essay in The Atlantic, chosen by David Brooks for a Sidney Award and much trafficked and debated on the Web, inspired this book. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (March 31, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067002256X
• ISBN-13: 978-0670022564
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #415,265 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 71 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Magazine Article Expanded into a Book April 4, 2011

By P. Chrzanowski

Format:Hardcover

This book is an expanded version of an article of the same title that was published in the June, 2008 issue of The Atlantic Magazine. Overall, the book does not have much to say that was not said in the magazine article. It does digress at some length into autobiography- the author got caught up in the housing bubble and he and his wife bought more house than they could comfortably afford, and this also caused some strain in his marriage. It's included (I guess) so the reader understands how and why the author became an adjunct, but, it goes on at some length and doesn't seem necessary.

The author's thesis is that too many students go to college, driven by a job market that increasingly requires at least a 2-year degree in order to be considered for many types of employment. And, indeed, it is not obvious that an R.N. or a police officer needs to be able to discuss the works of Shakespeare of T.S. Eliot, or know how to correctly write and annotate a research paper.

But, people in these occupations (and many others) do need to be capable of clear, concise expository writing. Unfortunately, this is something many high school graduates cannot do. The author identifies the reasons: many adults are not readers; they just never read books unless they have to. And, the much of the public school education establishment has decided that "creative spelling" is acceptable, and teaching grammar is oppressive. And so, colleges at all levels now offer remedial courses in an attempt to teach incoming students what they should have learned in high school.

The author seems to believe that an inability to write is found only in "the basement of the ivory tower," but he is mistaken. I made extra money in college by helping other students edit their papers. There is a fine line here: helping to edit another's paper is legitimate, but actually ghostwriting the paper is not. Although I went to a school with very selective admissions, some of the papers I was asked to edit were little more than "word salads," made up of incomplete sentences (lacking subject or verb or both) and with no paragraph breaks. It wasn't just bad spelling and bad grammar-- it was more like trying to extract meaning from someone's barely literate stream-of-consciousness output.

I think his analysis of why "creeping credentialism" exists is incomplete. He identifies a college degree as a "signal," a means of showing a prospective employer that one was smart enough to get in and had good enough work habits to graduate. He recognizes this as a stunningly inefficient way to show that one is likely to have smarts and good work habits. But he does not explore why employers would use such inefficient methods instead of directly testing for the qualities they seek.

It's hard to believe the author does not realize that employers cannot simply test for academic smarts by giving an IQ test, or for specific knowledge by testing for it. The reason being that most tests will produce a "disparate impact" if all races and ethnicities do not perform equally well. There are few safe harbors here and, even if a business can prove "business necessity," the cost of litigation- esp. if a government agency is involved- can be ruinous.

So, employers continue to use college degrees as proxies for the qualities they seek, perhaps because colleges are still allowed to test and grade students. Until other usable methods are available, employers will continue to do so. And so, I found the author's proffered solutions to be weak, as any solution which does not address this issue is incmplete.

In summary, I'd suggest you read the magazine article first, because it's really a very good article. And then, if you think you'd like to see the article expended into a book, buy the book. But don't expect that the book will contain much that was not in the magazine article.

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Telling it like it is April 10, 2011

By Elizabeth Stoney

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Like Professor X, I have taught writing for years at a community college (five years to be precise). I don't now teach in the classroom; I work in a writing center. But I did teach in a classroom for three semesters. I admire Professor X's perseverance in the face of what can be a very disheartening mission: to get students who are at a junior high level of reading and writing (or lower) to college level in a few semesters.

I agree with his conclusion that herding the masses into community colleges is not really in the interest of most of the students. It's great for the college's bottom line; it makes America feel good about itself; and it provides part-time employment for lots of adjuncts and full-time employment for a few teachers and administrators. Probably most important, it provides streams of revenue to the banks that loan money to millions of poorly prepared poor people, just as the banks loaned money to lots of people who couldn't really afford the houses they were buying. But unlike mortgages, student loans are nearly impossible to get out of. Many, many people are saddled with debt for years, people who were already struggling financially. People go to college because they want to make it into the middle class, but nowadays, landing a middle class job right out of college is an unattainable dream for most of these students; yet they still have to pay off their student loans.

Professor X seems to work at a pretty good community college. Not all community colleges are as well-run as his. He doesn't go into the institutional problems that can be so demoralizing to both students and faculty. Maybe someone else will write that book.

The book is funny and entertaining, particularly for teachers perhaps. I found myself laughing out loud often, and frequently highlighting particularly poignant or insightful passages. It's a very personal book, although Professor X also alludes to studies about community colleges and the teaching of writing to barely literate people. He shares his worst moments as a teacher as well as his best. There's no feel-good ending. This is not a Lifetime television story. It rings true to me.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable, But Ignores the Elephant in the Room June 1, 2011

By Robert Szarka VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower was both more and less than I expected.

I didn't expect "Professor X" to recount so much of his life outside the classroom, and I was surprised to find that I related as much to his personal as to his academic story. Unlike other reviewers, I believe this personal dimension adds something to his analysis. Professor X is on the opposite side of podium, but he has much in common with his students: his own education was unfocused and did little to prepare him for his "day job"; burdensome debt, albeit a result of the housing bubble rather than the education bubble, led him to take on a second job, so he spends less time with his family than he would like; and the effects of bad choices earlier in his life can't simply be edited away. Perhaps this is the source of the compassion he clearly feels for the men and women who struggle through his classes.

Nor did I expect to enjoy Professor X's writing for its own sake. True, his style is (perhaps understandably) self-conscious, and he often overreaches. But a decade in the trenches hasn't killed the obvious pleasure he takes in crafting an apt turn of phrase. When he succeeds, his joy is contagious. Likewise, I was surprised to learn that, despite his circumstances, Professor X does enjoy teaching. He seems to get much more than a paycheck from his time in classroom. (Those who find the early chapters too depressing should skip ahead to chapter 8 ("The Good Stuff") or chapter 15 ("Resonance").)

What I did expect from this book was a clear-eyed assessment of the state of higher education in the US, and I was not disappointed. Professor X sticks primarily to his own experiences and facts about general trends, but his observations ring true. His experiences will sound familiar to anyone who has taught at a community college or in the continuing education program of a state university; they will also sound familiar to many who have taught at more selective institutions, even if the crisis there is not so acute. Professor X's students are trapped between the proverbial rock and the proverbial hard place: they are woefully unprepared for college-level work, but without a college degree of some kind their employment prospects are nearly hopeless. Most of his students will ultimately fail to complete a degree, or indeed learn much of anything during their college experience, wasting both public and private resources. Many of those who do graduate will have trouble recouping their investment--in pecuniary terms or in broader satisfaction with life. Professor X concludes that many of today's college students should not attend college at all, and that the US educational system should instead provide more post-secondary vocational training. This isn't an unreasonable lesson to draw from his experience, though I'm not sure that economic research provides unequivocal support for this policy. Certainly, the "Mexican standoff" between students, instructors, industry, colleges, and policy-makers is untenable.

But in 250-odd pages, the elephant in the room goes unremarked: Professor X seems to give little thought to why his students arrive so unprepared for his classes. He does tell us that even the students who aren't functionally illiterate have read very little before starting college, and that it's practically impossible for them to make up for this deficit and develop an ear for good writing in just one semester. He also tells us that grammar is a dirty word in today's middle schools, and that today's high school graduates aren't even capable of the kind of writing that everyone--not just college students pondering the themes of great literature--needs to master. Is it possible that fewer US workers would need to attend college to gain these basic skills, or signal that they possess them, if a high school diploma meant something? Is it possible that the students who fail to complete college today aren't intrinsically incapable of college-level work, but could have succeeded if given the tools to do so in the first eighteen years of their life? Professor X doesn't attempt to answer these questions; he doesn't even ask them.

In the end, I'm not sure that In the Basement of the Ivory Tower adds much to the debate over America's educational priorities. But it may be eye-opening for those who've never taught a college class. And it may be enjoyable--truly enjoyable, not just as schadenfreude--for those who have.