After the Ivory Tower Falls
How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics—and How to Fix It
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3.8 • 12 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
From Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Will Bunch, the epic untold story of college—the great political and cultural fault line of American life
Winner of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Award | Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction | "This book is simply terrific." —Heather Cox Richardson | "Ambitious and engrossing." —New York Times Book Review | "A must-read." —Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains
Today there are two Americas, separate and unequal, one educated and one not. And these two tribes—the resentful “non-college” crowd and their diploma-bearing yet increasingly disillusioned adversaries—seem on the brink of a civil war. The strongest determinant of whether a voter was likely to support Donald Trump in 2016 was whether or not they attended college, and the degree of loathing they reported feeling toward the so-called “knowledge economy" of clustered, educated elites. Somewhere in the winding last half-century of the United States, the quest for a college diploma devolved from being proof of America’s commitment to learning, science, and social mobility into a kind of Hunger Games contest to the death. That quest has infuriated both the millions who got shut out and millions who got into deep debt to stay afloat.
In After the Ivory Tower Falls, award-winning journalist Will Bunch embarks on a deeply reported journey to the heart of the American Dream. That journey begins in Gambier, Ohio, home to affluent, liberal Kenyon College, a tiny speck of Democratic blue amidst the vast red swath of white, post-industrial, rural midwestern America. To understand “the college question,” there is no better entry point than Gambier, where a world-class institution caters to elite students amidst a sea of economic despair.
From there, Bunch traces the history of college in the U.S., from the landmark GI Bill through the culture wars of the 60’s and 70’s, which found their start on college campuses. We see how resentment of college-educated elites morphed into a rejection of knowledge itself—and how the explosion in student loan debt fueled major social movements like Occupy Wall Street. Bunch then takes a question we need to ask all over again—what, and who, is college even for?—and pushes it into the 21st century by proposing a new model that works for all Americans.
The sum total is a stunning work of journalism, one that lays bare the root of our political, cultural, and economic division—and charts a path forward for America.
Customer Reviews
If you care about factual information and history
This is an honest, captivating account of our broken system. It not only captures this moment well, but what has led up to it. And yes, late stage capitalism is not working. It never has worked well for everyone, but the most people it ever worked for was when Dwight Eisenhower was president of the United States because we had a balance of interests being addressed instead of the neoliberal corporate handouts we have today as well as the toadying to the rich and powerful.
The founding fathers intended America to be the birthplace of a new breed. A breed of human beings so complacent they would be happy to work for free as indentured servants and their children. They constantly talk about “breeding” in their writings. They failed. Jefferson even failed at farming. They were wealthy landowners who had no interest in creating a middle class or making the lives of the poor better.
This is what our current right-wing extremists want to do. Go back to the days when you could literally brand another human being with a V for vagrant if they were homeless. Or to incarcerate someone for being poor. Federalists literally want to turn back time. We never really escaped British colonialism. The class system that existed there, exists here. And the people who are pushing for this return, see all of you who aren’t them as garbage people who don’t deserve a seat at their table.
This does not go deep into that history. But it exposes the deep roots of our classist past and present in our university system. Especially at the Ivy League level. I also think the author does a good job of presenting possible solutions.
Anti capitalist anti Trump rant
Nothing new here. This is an anti capitalist anti Trump rant that takes a very real problem and approaches it from such an extremist standpoint that negates any possible benefit it might otherwise achieve. Unfortunately, we must look elsewhere for a cure for a real unfolding disaster.