A History of American Higher Education by John R. Thelin

This book gives a broad overview of the history of higher education in the United States from its colonial beginnings until 2000. It does a really nice job teasing out some of the nuances, especially in terms of the relationship between state and federal governments and institutions of higher education--what does it mean to be a public institution? what were the results of the Morrill Land Grant act? It also incorporates the history of women and people of color in education into its history, rather than isolating these groups in short, separate chapters. Thelin always has his eye on two goals: present an honest history that really looks at the changes in higher education (rather than single-mindedly valorizing the past as better and bemoaning the present) and show how we can learn from the past (successes and mistakes) to make higher education serve the country more successfully than ever. At times Thelin repeats the same anecdote, and the book aims at a big-picture rather than an in-depth account, but this is a great introduction to the history of higher education in the United States.

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: The Truth About College by Professor X

This book grew from a pseudonymous article in The Atlantic, also titled "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower." It chronicles one man's journey into adjuncting college writing and literature classes to supplement his income after buying a house just before the housing bubble crashed. Professor X is cynical of the idea that college is the way to wealth for most of his students and argues that we (as a nation) should re-evaluate our college system. While Professor X has come under a lot of attack for giving up on his students (attacks that he meets head-on later in the book), I think the book works as a call to look at our colleges. While I think that anyone could benefit from writing more clearly, I think Professor X is right to question the "go to college or else" mandate and to think about how much remedial work is possible in one semester. The memoir part of the book strikes me as a little bland at times (we bought an expensive house and then we couldn't afford it very well, so we fought about it).

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

This book, while not quite Dickensian, weaves a number of related plots together as it follows the baseball career of Henry Skrimshander at Westish College, a small school in the Midwest whose former claim to fame had been the lecture that Herman Melville once gave there. There's the story about baseball, of course, but the book also delves into a variety of friendships in the baseball penumbra and beyond, reaching all the way to the office of the college's president. I thought the characters drove the plot in convincing ways. There were a number of nice nods to literary history (most notably Fifth Business and A Prayer for Owen Meany).