Is College Worth It?

A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education

By: William Bennett, David Wilezol

Narrated by: Tommy Cresswell

Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

Explore the answer to a critical question: Should we keep sending our kids to college? The American system of higher education comprises some of the best universities, teachers, and students the world has ever seen. Millions of students around the globe want nothing more in their life than to attend an American university.

However, many of America’s colleges and universities today have serious academic, institutional, and other performance problems, and it is quickly approaching a crisis point, if it’s not there already. Despite some excellent colleges and quality programs at many colleges, too much of higher education is wildly expensive. Students often graduate having learned little, or don’t graduate at all.

They are indoctrinated with liberal politics and subjected to all types of non-academic distractions. For these reasons, many students would be better served exploring other educational alternatives.

In Is College Worth It?, William J. Bennett and David Wilezol assess the problems of American higher education at various levels, from runaway costs to inferior academics to poor graduation rates to political indoctrination, and propose serious reforms and alternative methods for improving higher education so that it better serves our students.

©2013 Thomas Nelson (P)2013 Thomas Nelson

Very good book

super book. very thought provoking. I would highly recommend this book to young and old

A must read for every parent thinking about sendin

Excellent book that i will own as a reference. This book delivers all the insider information that has a critical role in choosing your future college .

Uninsightful, inconsistent, and ideological

This is just another book written by politicians/businessmen to provide their own political/business interests. My two main regrets are: 1) wasted time listening to obvious advice; 2) paying money for them.

This book promotes William Bennett's own company (K12) and other companies affiliated to him (e.g. Udacity).

The book reads like a long winded commercial with superficial arguments using limited and selective data (e.g. PayScale) to support them. The authors also used this opportunity to promote their own political and religious views, masked in form of education and financial advice, without presenting other views. In addition, many of the key arguments presented by the authors were inconsistent throughout the book.

Although the book pointed out high financial costs of U.S. education and questioned its effectiveness in training the American workforce, it made no effort to compare and draw insights from successful and relevant countries such as Canada, Australia, and Sweden. These countries offer cost-effective and high quality public education to their citizens in which American companies and universities recruits heavily from. Having been a former United States Secretary of Education, it is unlikely that Mr. Bennett is unaware of this information, but more likely it is ignored because it runs counter to his own political beliefs.