Fail U.: The False Promise of Higher Education

Sykes (senior fellow, Wisconsin Policy Research Inst.) here effectively harnesses the acerbic tone of his 1988 sensational take-down of higher education Profscam to make a case for change along more free-market lines. Professors come in for the harshest criticism, as Sykes portrays them as a bunch of tweed-wearing layabouts who care less about teaching than padding their resumes with "timewasting drivel" (the author's uncharitable term for academic research). Much of Sykes's narrative will have a familiar ring, as he examines already widely covered issues such as unsustainable student debt burdens and accumulating evidence that most students learn relatively little during their college years, as well as more controversial subjects such as rape culture on college campuses and classroom "trigger warnings." Sykes presents several recommendations for how to put higher education back on the right track, including asking professors to "spend more time with students" and holding universities accountable for student learning and graduation rates. Readers who do not subscribe to Sykes's contrarian views may be put off by this volume's strident and snarky tone (e.g., in a chapter devoted to campus rape, he dismisses rules attempting to codify sexual consent as "a conflation of High Victorian prudery and radical feminist theory").