Review: What's the Point of College?: Seeking Purpose in an Age of Reform

What's the Point of College?: Seeking Purpose in an Age of Reform by Johann N. Neem
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Neem's concise and insightful book guides readers into the complex elements that make up higher education in the early 21st century. He provides historical context to many of the internal challenges of colleges and universities as the issues that confuse the general public about the nature of higher education.  For instance, he provides a rich discussion of understanding the difference about a college education as the battle between enrichment of the individual and seeking for the preparation of a career. He convincingly makes an argument in favor of the former given that the latter does not have the proven track record that people tend to think it does.  In other places, he draws out the challenges among tenure track faculty and other institutional members and how this creates of challenges and disconnects in higher education.  His work is highly accessible to the lay reader and can help anyone who is going to be engaging with higher education (as a student, a parent of a student, a staff member, a new faculty member) to get a solid 30,000-foot view. My only caveat with his assessment is his underselling, underdefining, and misrepresenting online education, which is something he largely criticizes without genuinely looking at many of the important and successful examples and models.

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