Customer Reviews

Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth about America's Top Schools

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

August 24, 2001 (in his syndicated newspaper column)
Choosing a college
By Thomas Sowell
About this time every year, high school seniors and their parents start trying to figure out how to choose a college. With application deadlines for some colleges starting as early as this fall for students who want to begin college next fall, there is not a lot of time. When you take into account the lead time needed to apply to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test or the American College Testing Program's exam -- and then the time before the results are tabulated and sent out to the college admissions offices -- there is not much time left, even for those students who are applying for colleges whose deadlines are next January or February.
Nevertheless, a hasty decision can have repercussions that last for years. Campus stresses can lead to psychiatric problems, drug dependency or even suicide. It happens from the Ivy League to Podunk U. One lovely young woman committed suicide by jumping from the building in which I had my office at UCLA and I saw her body in the bushes on my way to work. Another whom I encountered had picked up a devastating drug habit at Harvard.
Much more is involved in choosing a college than whether they have prestigious professors or high SAT scores.
On some campuses, black students will live as segregated a life as in the days of the Jim Crow South, and find other black students resenting them if they spend their time in the library or at the computer lab, instead of in racial breast-beating activities. But the atmosphere is very different on other campuses where students of all races can make education their top priority.
None of this is covered in the brightly colored brochures that the college admissions offices send you and most college guides don't get down to this kind of nitty gritty. However, there is one college guide that does. It is titled "Choosing the Right College" and it has an introduction by Bill Bennett. The National Catholic Register calls it: "A godsend for anyone who wants to know how to beat the academic establishment and actually get an education."
There are many colleges and universities where it is possible to get a fine education -- but where you can also graduate without learning anything that you don't want to learn. You can get a degree from some of the most prestigious institutions in America without having a clue about science, history, math or economics, because you take only the courses you want to take.
The latest edition of Choosing the Right College quotes a Harvard student: "You can get away without learning a scrap of European or U.S. history." It also quotes a Harvard professor who says that the core curriculum there "is absolutely onerous in its gobbling up of students' time in courses that often enough are weak fare." And for four years of this, you are paying over a hundred grand in tuition!
Choosing the Right College is not just about muck-raking. It also tells you about colleges and universities that may not have big names, but which offer a finer education than some other places that are household words. For example, it calls Claremont McKenna College in Southern California "an excellent stomping ground for any student serious about his education." Of Rhodes College in Tennessee, it says: "Of the 110 institutions reported on in this guide, Rhodes is among the most distinctive and distinguished."
Institutions with strong educational traditions that are under siege from more ideologically faddish elements on campus are also covered -- the University of Chicago, Davidson and Birmingham-Southern, for example. So are places like Reed College, where the radical fads prevail, as "politicization" has become "entrenched," and where the college is described as "a farm team for graduate schools."
Choosing the Right College does not rank institutions numerically, the way U.S. News & World Report does in its guide called America's Best Colleges. That is part of the reason why Choosing the Right College is the best of the college guides and America's Best Colleges is the worst.
There is no such thing as the best college. The real question is whether a particular college is right for a particular individual. The more three-dimensional picture presented in Choosing the Right College helps parents and students to make the right choices for themselves, given the student's own abilities, interests and priorities.

If your local bookstore doesn't have this college guide, ask them to order it. It is well worth the effort.
©2001 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Choosing a college is a tough task--whether you're the student, their parent or their college counselor. This book definitely makes the process easier.

The typical high school junior receives dozens of glossy college viewbooks in the mail from the time they complete their first PSAT throughout their senior year. These viewbooks would have you believe that there's not a college out there that doesn't have very small classes, bright and multi-talented students, professors who are at each student's beck and call, and (let's not forget the classic) a class or two held outdoors, preferably with a beach nearby.

While the picture is a pretty one, it's not complete. This book clues you in about what education is really like at some of the nation's most revered colleges and universities. The editors approach the book from the viewpoint that a classic liberal arts undergraduate education is the most valuable to the individual and society so their natural focus is on how well this type of education is provided at various institutions. A classic liberal arts education highlights Western Civilization's developments in math, science and literature and this book's editors are determined in revealing how closely each college's core curriculum reflects that bent.

If, instead, you're looking for a college or university where the dogma is politically correct, where there is no absolute truth and where students call the shots, you might still appreciate reading this book because it is clear in explaining just what campuses feature that type of education.

Each school is reviewed through interviews with current professors and students, with detailed evaluations of curriculum, with a bit of the school's history and goals, and even, in some cases, by checking out which library sections are well-stocked and with what type of books. The editors reveal each school's highly-politicized departments, if any, as well as what student life is really like.

While I would have liked to have seen more colleges reviewed in this book, the authors do a good job of targeting the "name" schools and also including many lesser-known institutions which the editors feel are doing a an exceptional job in educating students. This helped our family incredibly because it steered us to several schools we might not have considered.

How accurate is the book? I can only speak anecdotally; we have a son who attends Thomas Aquinas College (we first heard of it in this book) and, after a year of school, he re-read the review of his school and found it absolutely on target. With such a solid correlation between what was written about TAC and the way it actually is, I have faith in the editors' reviews of the other schools in this book.

In short, this book is a real gem, with solid information that is much more revealing than the typical college guidebook.

I like this book for the type of informtion it gives on colleges, such as the political atmosphere and the type of curriculum. Many schools have eliminated core requirements and indeed, some have actually added politically chareged courses as required while eliminating traditional, time tested courses in Western Civilization. The analyses are useful and are very detailed. This is not a quick glimpse into the schools covered, but rather, a detailed description. I graduated from Vassar College years ago and had the impression that it was a bastion of political correctness. The profile in this book bears this out. This guide is truly unique and useful.

I have a major problem with this guide, however. There are many colleges I wanted to read about but they were not included in the book. For example Binghmapton University is covered but none of the other schools in the SUNY system are. There was nothing about several goog schools in Pennsylvania such as Franklin and Marshall, Dickinson, Bucknell, Lehigh, Gettysburg, etc. Ohio State University is covered well but there is nohing on other major schools in Ohio's state system such as Ohio University and Miami University (or for that matter, Universitey of Miami in Florida). The book is good, as far as it goes, but many, if not most of the colleges I was interested in reading about are not profiled.

Homeschoolers and others concerned with safety and overall moral quality of life on campus will find Choosing the Right College provides detailed advice. Combined with specifics on the quality of education, this makes the guide a real stand-out.

This college guide is based on what have become on many college campuses today radical premises: 1) There are some important things to learn, and not all college freshmen already know these things (or what they are) before they even get to college; 2) before you criticize, condemn or just ignore all "Western" culture, perhaps you should actually know something about it; 3) colleges should encourage critical thinking and balanced study over simple absorption of commonly accepted points of view; and 4) the First Amendment should be allowed free exercise on college campuses. It does a good job of describing to what extent the colleges profiled in the book fit these premises.

If you haven't followed the changes in the American university in the last 30 years, while you were out some big changes have happened. The confluence of postmodern, poststructuralist theory and radical leftist politics have converted many universities into ideologically-driven intellectual killing fields. The misuse of the PM/PS discoveries of linguistic and cultural contexts to justify "deconstructing" all "truths" except those asserted by whomever is doing the deconstructing have led to the notion that there are no universal truths, only points of view and culturally-relative constructs. Of course, that point of view is asserted to be universally true across all cultures, but never mind. Why is this relevant to choosing a college?

The rise of PM/PS relativism has been used as the intellectual justification to abandon core curricula and the study of Western cultural heritage. If there are no truths, then there are only power elites pushing their culturally constructed points of view. In the case of Western civilization, this has meant the dominance of the oppressive, racist, imperialistic patriarchy. If Western culture is to be studied at all, it is only to be "deconstructed"," which means attacked and discredited in toto. Chaucer, Plato, Homer, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Kant, Milton, and all the rest are relevant only as examples of a culture that is corrupt and illegitimate at its core, end of discussion. Using the honorable goals of encouraging the histories and points of view of other cultures, the new proponents of "multiculturalism," and "diversity" have in fact created a climate in which all cultures are worthy of honor except the one that gave birth to that concept. And "diversity" really means, in good Orwellian fashion, adherence to a narrow view critical of all things Western. Under this point of view, the shortcomings of Western civilization are the ONLY aspects of WC worth studying. Not merely that these may be valid aspects to study, but that they are the ONLY aspects worthy of study. This book attempts to root out colleges (and programs or departments within colleges) that still offer at least the option of studying the non-politically fashionable aspects of the Western canon.

That is why the premises of this book have become radical on today's campuses. You can glance through some of the other reviews of this book here and find evidence that these premises have also become associated with the dreaded "right wing" or religious indoctrination (as opposed to the secular indoctrination now dominant on so many campuses.) According to that point of view, this book should be stamped out, just as its premises should be purged from our college campuses, which they largely have. The fact is, this book does not advance right-wing political doctrine, but only the notion that there is a body of knowledge (the Western canon) worth learning, even for the purpose of knowledgeably criticizing it, and that people who do not agree in every respect with whatever political point of view is in fashion on a campus should not be silenced, intimidated or threatened. Radical, huh?

"Choosing the Right College" reports on the absence or existence of a core curriculum (as opposed to near or total lack of any curricular structure), in case you too cling to the archaic notion that colleges should offer some guidance as to what used to be called a "liberal" education might consist of. It attempts to describe the political environment and free speech climate. Free speech and the ability to critique the political views of professors are in notorious short supply on campuses these days. The term "politically correct" was first coined to refer to the curtailment of free speech on college campuses. Contrary opinions are routinely literally shouted down, purged from print or public discourse and labelled as "hate" speech or the like. In case you think this is not conducive to education, much less freedom, this book will give some hints as to which colleges allow more, or less freedom of expression and thought.

This book gives the college searcher a tool to get a clue as to the contentof the education they (or their progeny) are likely to get at the colleges profiled. It gives the reader a quick screening device for colleges most (and least) likely to meet the criteria set out in its premises. It will help the reader start formulating questions to find out more, as their college search progresses. No other college guide does this, that I am aware of, and I have looked at dozens.

As for this book advancing "right-wing" values? Well, it does alert the reader to the existence of core curricula in such right-wing bastions as, say, Columbia University. If you think that kind of thought should be stamped out, don't buy this book. Or better yet, buy it and stage a burning.

Although I already possess a B.A., I became interested in reading the book after hearing about it from both Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. When I arrived at the store, I noticed on the back of the book that John Silber thought highly of the book. After reading an interview with Silber in the magazine American Enterprise and being impressed by what he had to say, his recommendation seemed to lend the final piece of nudging that I needed to buy the book.

The book has four main sections for each college covered. The first section gives the reader an overview of the institution. The second section highlights general education requirements, or lack of them, and focuses on satisfactory and unsatisfactory departments alike. In addition, the section includes a short list of professors that the authors consider excellent. The third section provides a description of the political atmosphere at the university. The final section offers an overview of the surrounding community's living and cultural environment.

With eager anticipation I read through the book. It slowly changed my views about the excellence of many name brand elite institutions and introduced me to smaller institutions (e.g. St John's College and Thomas Aquinas College) that seemed to have stellar undergraduate systems. However, when I got to the section on my alma mater, it dawned on me that perhaps the book wasn't as outstanding as I had believed it to be. As I read the description of The Ohio State University, I had a hard time reconciling my experience with the statements that the authors were making. (I graduated fall quarter 2000 with a B.A. as a double major in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Political Science from The Ohio State University. I took various economic, history, political science, and language classes including 30 credit hours of Latin.) Had I really attended a university whose intellectual stature was along the lines of a community college? I decided to sit down and look at what the book postulates and compare it to what common sense, critical thought, and a little bit of research would yield.

The review in the book begins by stating that OSU is "not the place to go for a liberal arts education, if you have a choice" and that "OSU liberal arts faculty...agree that students looking for a serious liberal arts education would be better served elsewhere." The book does acknowledge that Ohio State's size makes it difficult to generalize attributes and that the "primary advantage of a large school like OSU" is that traces of traditionalism can be found in most departments on account of their size. It also notes that according to one professor, "only `focused, savvy undergraduates' interested in going on for a professional or graduate degree...will be well served at OSU."

While it is true that Ohio State does not require all students to become enlightened liberal arts graduates, the book sorely understates the possibility of a student graduating with a great education in the liberal arts. With an English department having close to seventy faculty members, a History faculty of similar depth, a Political Science department with close to fifty faculty members, an Economics department with forty members, a Philosophy department with twenty-five members, and a Latin and Greek department of sixteen faculty members, one would be hard-pressed to write all of them off as poor teachers or mediocre intellectuals unless one had a grudge to pick with Ohio State. The History department is home to numerous medieval and European historians. Among some of the better teachers are Joseph Lynch and Jack Balcer both of which have been recognized for excellence in teaching. The English department has numerous professors who specialize in medieval, renaissance, and British literature. John Champlin offers an unbiased approach to teaching political philosophy in the classroom.

Political atmosphere for all schools seems to be based more on anecdotal evidence and feelings than actual data. What would be more helpful, and more accurate, would be for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) to make use of the data collected in the fall survey of freshmen designed by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP). Numerous universities administer the survey. According to the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI), "In Fall 2000, over 404,000 students completed the Freshman Survey at 717 participating institutions nationwide." (Quoted from http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/cirp_freshman_survey_results.htm) The survey asks students to label themselves as one of the following: Far Left, Liberal, Middle of the Road, Conservative, or Far Right. In addition, the survey includes questions concerning the student's stances on certain issues that often stand as markers for political ideology. For example, the survey asks about abortion, same-sex marriages, federal handgun control, and whether or not "wealthy" people should pay higher taxes. An internet-savvy prospective student would benefit from searching for the survey results of the colleges under consideration as many colleges make the data on their institution available as a PDF file. The researchers could then move on to the faculty and through the use of voting registration (similar to the work done by Karl Zinsmeister) present a breakdown of the political make-up of the humanities or liberal arts departments at a school.

Unfortunately, I'm unable to present a more detailed review as the limit is only 1,000 words. (My review was closer to 2,000 words.) The back of the book states that the book is "based on in-depth research." However, the work fails to site any sources of information. Doing so would allow the reader to check the validity of the statements. Overall, the book is useful for highlighting colleges that a prospective student may not have heard mentioned in other guides. However, it would be a mistake for students to take the information presented in the book at face value without utilizing other guides and research tools to come to a balanced and objective view of the colleges being reviewed.

I teach at a major university so I was looking forward to this book. While I believe there is an important rationale for a book like this (to evaluate colleges based on their left-wing bias or lack thereof), this edition was somewhat short of the mark.

First, it doesn't rate many colleges, only 110. Second, it provides information more in narrative than in factual ratings which make it seem more biased than it may actually be. Lastly, it's focus is the Humanities and Political Atmosphere but there is much more to college life that ought to be explored.

For Instance:

I really regretted that it did not have a better breakdown of dorm life. Some "elite" schools not only require students to live in the dorms but then mandate that all dorms be co-ed (in some cases the ROOMS are co-ed). It would be nice to rule out that kind of foolishness before wasting time on such a school.

Also, academic rigor can actually be measured by looking at grade inflation. This book did not do that in any way that allows you to measure one school against another.

One thing I did like was a discussion of the crime situation at each campus. Very good info for parents to consider.

The beauty of this kind of a guide is that they usually improve with later editions. Let's hope so.

This is a great encyclodedic reference. And well put together. But, before you attempt to choose a college, it is important that you understand what the goals and purposes of higher education to both you and America are. The only current book that tells you these things is a book called "WEST POINT", by Norman Thomas Remick. It's critical that you know what you should look for before you start pouring over "CHOOSING THE RIGHT COLLEGE", a bonafide 5 star book designed for that purpose.

This book is helpful but not a must read to those searching for a college. It focusses on the curriculum. A topic that is not usually the central figure of a college manual. It is a bit one sided and comes out strongly in favor of those with a soldi core curriculum. I wouldn't say it is essential but I would say that it wouldn't hurt.

*it is more of a 3.6 than a 4

This is not a book for the first time browser. If you are just looking for the scoop on your favorite name brand college then forget this book.
Read the Introduction carefully and you will see that the philosophy of this ISI approach is to value the schools that have a curriculum that they believe falls into the category of a "Core".
Their belief is that there is a body of information and fundamental skills that are universal to a "well-educated " person. They believe that many colleges have eroded this with "fluff" curriculum courses and lowering of standards. This book reviews schools that they believe have not seriously eroded academic standards. An excellent book for parents. It helped me choose Kenyon College for my daughter last year over more seemingly prestigious schools. The authors were exactly right in their evaluation of an outstanding, rigorous, yet not brutally competitive college with great scholarly teachers that imparted a love of their subject with compassion to the students. I did not find this academic approach in any other of the college books.