Customer Reviews

Bright College Years: Inside the American Campus Today

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4 star:		(1)
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This is a well written account of contemporary college life that is a breeze to read. It is one of the better books on higher education written in the last decade, and at least one to two notches above insider books by college deans and presidents like Rosovsky and Kennedy. It's strange to me that parents and prospective college students plunk down so much money for college and don't read books like this. It would extremely beneficial to them if they did.

Bright College Years is one of the few books that caused me to laugh and cry simultaneously. Anne Matthews writes wonderfully, showing emotional brilliance both light-hearted and literate.

Easy read with a bunch of insightful and funny comments; it was so delightful that I finished it in 4 hours without putting it down once. What I missed were solutions or answers to the increasing violence and substance abuse in American campuses today, but if the answers were that clear, we wouldn't be discussing them, would we?

"Those who can't do, teach," goes the old saw. Well, this teacher of college journalism has written a WONDERFUL piece of journalism about college. "Bright College Years" overflows with passion, clarity, and a feel for the language that socks you in the teeth. You students who want to learn what writing is, sign up for Matthews's class, arrive on time, and sit up front

Bright College Years crystalizes the college experiences for anyone who has ever attended and demystifies the town/gown debate for everyone else. Whether it's a small college in South Dakota or a cultish alumni reunion at Princeton, Anne Matthews has seen it all. It makes you understand the concrete sprawl of the large universities and makes you yearn for a small school like the College of Charleston. I think I finally understand what the fuss is all about about higher education

This is an amazing book: clear, strong, funny, scary, heartbreaking. Everyone who ever went to college, or wants to go to college, or works on a U.S. campus, needs to read every page. Matthews writes beautifully, and knows her material from the inside: born and raised on campuses, a college professor and a journalist both, she's a rare crossed wire, able to explain both her worlds to the general reader with compassion and skill and reams of well-arranged fact.This book is especially useful because the author takes no obvious political position; instead, she goes from campus to campus holding up a mirror to a world not at all used to scrutiny, or to accountability.From wealthy and urbane Ivy League schools to the vast sweet-tempered campuses of the Big Ten to struggling small institutions like the College of Charleston to hardscrabble trailer-house efforts like the Native American university Sinte Gleska, deep in rural Dakota, Matthews's readers vividly see what daily life is actually like inside the first-year dorm, the classroom, the faculty office, the president's waiting room--and why. This isn't a right-wing attack, like Dinesh D'Souza or Bill Bennett; it's not a leftist defense of p.c. It's fresher, more affectionate, and far better researched: a note tossed over a very high wall, a native daughter's field notes from a very odd American landscape indeed. 'Bright College Years' should prove both controversial and valuable, if only for the important and disturbing questions the author poses about the world behind the ivy: "What's going ON in there? And what, exactly, these days, is college FOR? To make us rich? Decent? Wise? Members of the educated working poor? Yet for seven centuries, the basic alchemy of the venture has held. Learn, or leave. Be willing to be changed, or get out."

I started reading Bright College Years by Anne Matthews before classes began in September. When I found the book in the bookstore my first thought was that it looked interesting and that I could not wait to start reading. What could be better than reading about what was to come in the months and years ahead? So, on a hot summer day I took it outside, layed in the sun, and started reading. By the end of the first ten pages I was a little confused. Matthews seemed to be putting alot of useful information in but there was not much organization. One paragraph would be describing the employment at the American colleges. The next contemplates how a student chooses a college(28-29). What do these two paragraphs have to do with each other? The fact remains that I do not think Matthews is completely off track. She decided to place the book in an order which would represent the time and changes with the seasons of the year. She is our tour guide, bringing us through the dorms, classrooms, and faculty offices. Experiencing parts of the ivy league schools, as well as, middle American Campuses. Matthews is qualified to write for us accounts on college experiences. Raised on the campus of the University of Wisconson and now teaching at New York University, she has the knowledge to convey her ideas with depth and clarity to the reader. However, at times she seems to have too much to say. Perhaps focusing in on either the students, the alumni, or the

teachers and collaborating a part two would have been a better choice.

As a student, the most interesting parts which kept me captivated were the excepts of other student's thoughts and experiences. If she cut out some of the boring statistics that most of us would care less to know, I think there would have been more positive reviews in our class. After almost falling asleep reading about moldy butter at Harvard in the 1800's and tuna casserole in the 1940's, I woke up with a smirk at a the letters from the students to the cook. Students can relate to the more realistic examples then to the facts of history. I finished this book with a sigh of relief. While I was entertained by the different examples of real student's thoughts and adventures, I was losing interest while reading the useless information and fighting to stay awake. As a whole I would not completely criticize Matthew's book but I would not exactly praise it either.