I’m going to give this one to you straight.
I still don’t know how I feel about this book.
On the one hand, I appreciated the setting of higher education. I have extensive knowledge of the current trends in higher ed, and the author did a great job of describing the problems that colleges are facing these days.
The “for-profit” models, the focus on FTEs and enrollment at the expense of programs, the theory of using a business model hierarchy (CEOs, COOs, etc.) instead of traditional positions (Presidents, Provosts, etc.), and especially the propensity to use adjuncts as a replacement for tenured faculty are all very real to today’s world of education.
I also thought that the murder mystery at the heart of the book was intriguing, and the “whodunnit” nature of that thread is what ultimately kept me reading.
Unfortunately, there were a couple of things that made this book a more difficult read than it should have been.
First, the focus on neoliberalism in colleges is misguided in today’s higher ed universe. While it is true that the emphasis on capitalistic practices in higher ed has grown, it is by no means the driving force of today’s colleges.
Indeed, the author almost totally lost me with the statement that colleges have experienced a rightward shift since Thatcher and Reagan.
Now, I may be misunderstanding the intent, but that could not be further from the truth. Colleges have become places where group-think is encouraged, and opposing viewpoints are to be ridiculed or (in many cases) completely shut down. And this is all done from the leftist point of view. So, to say that colleges have shifted right really rubbed me the wrong way.
I also thought that the author got too carried away with the minutiae of academia. I found it to be interesting because of my background, but an average reader could find it challenging to wade through a lot of the detailed academic descriptions to get to the heart of the plot.
Overall, it wasn’t a horrible book. But it certainly could have been tightened up in several places to make it a more exciting and accurate read.
