What's College For?: The Struggle to Define American Higher Education

Zachary Karabell set out across the nation to answer the simple,yet nebulous and all-encompassing question "What's College For?" He returned to compose an elegant, intelligent panoromic view of the widening expanse of American higher education. The book lacks real focus, but you get the feeling that Karabell wasn't really after that. He merely wanted to paint a broad view of American higher education. His work is all encompassing and, in the end, prescriptive; ultimately calling upon graduate schools to place greater emphasis on teaching and less significance on the pressure to publish. Karabell also considers the plight of adjunct faculty, the instituion of tenure, the widening gap between professors and society, the commodification of education, and the place of the humanities in the future of educaiton. It is an intelligent book which should be useful to anyone related to or considering American higher education.