Come and Get It

Come and Get It by Kiley Reid

A writer goes to visit the University of Arkansas. Then things get weird. She interviews some students in a dorm for a book on weddings. However, she ends up being more attracted to the them as people.  Meanwhile, one student (Kennedy) who loved the author's work keeps on missing out on meeting with her or her classes. The RA falls for the writer and has a lesbian affair. They happen to be making out when the Kennedy accidentally cuts her wrist with a pizza cutter kitchen-cleaning conflict with roommates. They all somehow manage to escape guilt, with the writer "patching things up" with money for one of the roommates and the RA. Sometimes it is best for people to stick with others their age. Seemingly small indiscretions can slowly spiral out of hand.

Boring Asian Female

Boring Asian Female by Canwen Xu

This reminded me of Best Offer Wins. In both cases, an Asian American lead is driven to succeed in the way she understands the American Dream, but goes off the rails. 

In this book, Elizabeth Zhang is in her last year at Columbia, getting ready to go to law school. She grew up in South Dakota with hard-working immigrant parents. She was the only Asian at her high school and never quite fit in. She went to Columbia because that was were the snobby elite in a TV show went. She had her mind set on attending Harvard Law school to achieve the life of wealth and prosperity that other classmates seemed to have. Then she learns she didn't get into Harvard Law, or any law school other than Georgetown. She also hears that another Asian female, got into Columbia. When Elizabeth talks with the pre-law advisor, the. feedback is that she has a good application, but that she is a "boring" Asian female. Then she seadil goes off the deep end.

She is convinced that Laura stole the spot at Harvard Law. She starts stalking Laura. She impersonates a high schooler to learn more about Laura. She even asks to be called Laura when making love. Then things get worse. She hatches a plan to get Laura's admission rescinded. She publishes an anonymous far-right blog in a way that would be identified as Laura. However, people eventually trace it to the male student whose login she used to publish it. He ends up dropping out of school, only to later become a right wing commentator. Elizabeth finds out she is pregnant. After getting money from the guy for an abortion, she decides instead to have the kid, so she can be less boring. She later sneaks into Laura's dorm, but Laura comes home (with limited mental functionality due to substance use.) After Laura finally realizes everything Elizabeth has done, Elizabeth sprayed her with pepper spray and got away. Laura dies from the spray. (she had a heart condition). Elizabeth showed no remorse, and was fine when another girl was charged with the manslaughter death. Elizabeth has a miscarriage. She later impersonates Laura in the Harvard law admit group. She has a big breakdown when the group calls her out as not being a real future student. After recovering, she gets a call from Harvard, letting her know there was an error with her score reporting and that she was now being offered a spot. 

Previously, Harvard said the decision was final and there was no way to validate the data. If only they hadn't Elizabeth would not have gone wacko. However, she showed clearly that she would do anything to have her desired success. Is this really the type of person you would want? The steps seemed logical, but the results were horrid. Is this an indictment of an over-driven Asian culture? The narrative was compelling and the characters. were interesting,  though I really wanted to see her charged rather than end up with her dream.

The Love Hypothesis

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

A girl runs into a guy when she is visiting campus. She thinks he is a grad student. He gives advice that helps her choose her future path. She doesn't realize that he is actually a professor and he had feelings for her also. She later chooses to kiss a random guy to "allow" her best friend to date her boyfriend. This ends up being the professor. But neither of them realized it at the time. They decide to carry on "fake dating" for a while. They are both oblivious to each other's feelings. It finally comes to a head when they agree to share a hotel room at a conference (in a Platonic relationship.) Things end up being not so platonic. Then there is the episode where the professor's old friend ends up being a scumbag and the professor gets in a fight with him. It makes for a welle-executed, very typical romantic comedy. You jus wish the main characters would stop behaving like middle schoolers and talk about their feelings.

Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Destruction in Higher Education

Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Destruction in Higher Education by Richard K. Vedder

Colleges tend to expose liberal ideologies, but institutionally they are extremely conservative. The organizational structure and institutions are very slow to change. Huge amounts of money flow through colleges with little validation of the value returned. Perhaps the only significant crack down has been on for-profit players. These players realized there was money to be made by making some small improvements. However, there is much more that needs to be done. The government provides fast subsidies through various routes. This may be justified for educating the populace and preparing people for careers. However, much of college is an early adulthood social experience. If government subsidizes this, should it also subsidize cruises and other social experiences for different populations? For education, the government has little validation of the value of a degree. The government may spend much more subsidizing a liberal arts degree at a low-tier private college than an engineering degree at a public university, despite the engineering degree enabling much greater career prospects. Schools are incentivized to invest more in "experience" rather than job prospects. College attendance costs have increased at a rate much greater than inflation. Colleges have significant facilities, much of which are highly underutilized. A dose of the free market may be best for colleges. The smaller schools could fail. Loans and other funding can be based on value returned. Innovation can be encouraged rather than letting accreditation bodies focus on sameness. (Why do all degrees take 4 years?) Universities are essentially government entities without regular elections. There are competing goals and missions. Improvements can be made, but will require some gradual approach.

College Admissions and the Public Interest

College admissions and the Public Interest B. Alden Thresher

This is available as a free PDF from the College Board. This talks about how college admissions should be organized to most benefit the public. It was written a half century ago. Some of the discussion seems quite current, while other parts seem dated. It remains a challenge to attract some people that could benefit to college. People continue to be attracted to colleges that are not necessarily best for them just because of the names and reputation. It includes some testimonials at the end of college admissions officers. It is still a wake up call to colleges that get lost in the arms race and forget to focus on benefitting society.

I Am Charlotte Simmons

I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe

A bright girl (Charlotte Simmons) from rural North Carolina goes off to fictional DuPont college, one of the top schools in the United States. There she encounters the prep-school elite that are more concerned with sex and sports than academics. She discovers that her French literature class is conducted in English - and is a popular one for jocks. In the class, she notices a student starts to give a smart answer, then plays dumb jock. The student later hits on her. She resists, but encourages him to not be dumb. (She didn't realize he was a basketball star.)  She switches out of that class and succeeds academically, but becomes disillusioned with the social life. There is plenty of underage drinking and her roommate boots her out in the middle of the night to have sex. She falls to peer pressure with some other girls and attends a frat party. A frat boy comes on to her. She spends time with him, but resists when he tries to get her alone in a room. One more boy, "a dork", comes onto her after running into her at the library and gym.

Despite not trying hard, she has a frat boy, a jock and a nerd all wanting her. They also have some connections to each other. The "dork" is on the newspaper and doing a story related to the frat boy and some bad behavior from the California governor. The dork works as an academic tutor and wrote a paper for the jock. At a tailgate, some boys get in a fight over her. The frat boy ends up stepping him to defend her. She later goes back to thank him. He invites her to an out of town frat formal. There, she ends up getting drunk and having sex with the frat boy. Gossip spreads after that and she feels horrible and loses her friends.

When she goes home for Christmas, she finds that is not home anymore. Her life with the rich kids at school is in a different universe than her rural home life. Her depression is also hitting her, resulting in her being even more distant from her family.

When she returns, her depression hits high gear. She doesn't want to be in her room with the other girls. She can't do much of anything. The dork boy helps save her. She moves in to his apartment (in a non-sexual way). He helps her to improve enough to go to her finals and eventually get mostly out of her depression. Then things flip. The dork tries to spill all beans to a professor regarding the paper he wrote for the jock. However, the professor uses that as an admission of guilt to press charges. Now he is depressed and needs her help. She helps for a bit, but is not as patient as he was. She eventually gets him to read his email and finds that his story about the governor's misdeeds is blowing up and the professor is now willing to drop his charges. As part of this, the frat boy has also become popular in school - but also lost his near-six-figure job.

The novel then jumps to a brief epilogue. The jock has had a career renaissance. He is one of the top players on the team. He is also challenging himself academically. He went against the coach's desires and took an advanced philosophy class. The next semester he challenged himself with even more academically challenging classes. Charlotte is now his girlfriend and has been helping push him to his academic success.

The book is a fairly easy read, but it is long and vulgar. The language is a bizarre combination of profanity and anatomical terms. The characters are mostly caricatures. The only character that experiences real growth is the basketball player who realizes that academics and discipline are valuable - and can improve his on-court performance. The main character spends time stepping out of her zone, but realizes it just made her feel worse. Keeping true to herself is what lead to a better experience. 

The author was a half-century removed from college when he wrote this book. He tried to get some details through research. This was written at a point in time that doesn't exist anymore. Cell phone were just coming into use - but only as phones. Social media was not yet a thing. College athletes still had the mirage of being students and were not yet fully professionalized. The view in the book is already dated. There were also some key details that were just missed. The school had finals after Christmas break. While high schools may do that, almost every college finishes before break. It also stretches credulity that all the "important" guys would be hitting on the same country girl. And would she be so cruel to just ditch the dork (even after telling her family that he was her boyfriend.)  What is the point of a not-quite accurate portrayal of college life with stock characters? Perhaps it is just an exercise in how 70-year old men see college students.

We’re Losing Our Minds: Rethinking American Higher Education

We’re Losing Our Minds: Rethinking American Higher Education by Richard P. Keeling and Richard H. Hersh

Colleges should focus on improving learning outcomes, rather than "all that other stuff." To do that, they need institutional change. All faculty should teach, and they should be provided appropriate training to do it well. Assessments should be valuable data that could be acted upon. A standard curriculum should encourage broad-based development of intellectual skills, rather than just be tedious "generals." Advising should be an important part of education. Students also need "immersive" education opportunities.

These plans all seem nice, but the authors seem to be too buried in academia. In numerous occasions, in this short book, they criticise the possibility of three year degrees. What benefit does four years give over three? What are students trying to learn? The plan seems to be great for those going to undergrad on the way to a doctorate. But what about others? College has become a "checkmark" item to get a good job. However, these jobs rarely use the knowledge gained in college. What are the skills and thought patterns that would be useful for future work? What type of intellectual learning would be useful? Do we spend more time teaching people how to learn rather than boring them? The authors identify an important problem, but their solution is off the mark.

Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions

Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions by Jeffrey J. Selingo

This is one of the better explorations of the college admissions process. The author has embedded himself with a few universities (Emory, Davidson and University of Washington). He explores exactly what goes on with the admissions committee. He also covers the history of admissions. The schools are responding to changes in rules as well as working to fill they needs. They are building an appropriate class as well as balancing their budgets. They also need to manage their reputation and rate of admits as well as yield rate.

There is a disconnect between what students think is important and what the colleges care about. Students will stress for hours over essays, but committees will often skim them. They are more interested in the voice and uniqueness rather than the typical "overcoming adversity in sports" essays. A laundry list of activities does not set apart a student. (It is better to show significant involvement.) Even grades and test scores may not guarantee admission if they are not paired with other interests.

Another key aspect is that students are rarely compared with each other. They are typically chosen based on their own merits and how they fit in with a class. Only if there are multiple students from a well-known school will there be some comparison of the students academic experience vs. what was available. Even then, the other factors come into play.

College admissions is a changing game. Lawsuits and regulations are changing how admission committees do their work. The financial age process turns the buyer/seller process upside down. It is an area ripe for innovation. However, regulation and fixed costs have made that difficult. 

I Hate the Ivy League: Riffs and Rants on Elite Education

The United States higher education system is one of the best in the world. Yet, it is also one of the most exclusive. The top schools get a huge amount of the money and the best students. Even attempts to increase access can often backfire. Schools are spending more and more on fancy facilities and amenities. 

Brown v Board of Education is an interesting case. The family didn't want the school district to tell them what school they could go to. However, they liked the school that they were going to and felt they were getting a good education. The Supreme Court instead declared that the black schools were inferior. Instead of integrating teachers, school district tried to integrate students. There was a great loss of black teachers and closure of black school. Black students tend to fare better and more likely to be in high achievement programs if they had a black teacher. Integration ended up hurting black students.

Our systems of school admissions (and even elections in general) has many artificial gatekeepers. The LSAT filters for fast test takers. This may be useful for quick business contracts, not so much for complex Supreme Court cases. Elections filter for charismatic speakers, not good administrators. School admission criteria in general are not very useful. Even in science, there is almost no relationship between the rating of proposed research and the citations of the research. Lotteries after a very basic filter would produce greater success.

Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit & the Making of the College Admissions Scandal

Operation Varsity Blues was the codename for the investigation into Rick's Singer's college admission business. Rich clients would make "donations" to his charity. In turn, money would flow to college coaches in order to get children marked as "athletes" for preferred admission to their desired colleges. 

Singer's business started off as a somewhat legitimate college admissions coaching business. However, he had experience coaching sports and desire to "win". He realized that sports provided a great route to admissions. While popular sports, such as football and basketball are heavily scrutinized, the lesser sports often go under the radar. Most Ivy League schools do not give athletic scholarships. However, they do let coaches flag priority athletic students. Some sports, such as sailing and rowing rely heavily on students with little experience in the sport. This allows students to be claimed as athletes without actually participating in sports.

The admissions ring also included additional "doctoring" of applications. There were a number of nefarious actions undertaken for ACT and SAT tests. At one time, they would just send somebody with a fake ID to take tests in the name of a student. However, photos and other security mechanisms made this more difficult. To work around it, they would buy off proctors in certain locations to allow tests to be corrected. They would also apply for disability accommodations to give them more time to complete the test. 

Applications would be written by Singer's team. They would write essays and even include fake information stolen from newspaper accounts of others.

The scheme unraveled due to an unrelated investigation into penny stock fraud. A witness detailed the bribes paid to a coach which eventually ensnared Singer. He cooperated with the government to expose his clients. Many plead guilty to crimes, leaving many wealthy leaders spending brief time in jail.

The sting seemed to ensnare a mixture of different cupabilities. Some coaches were freely greasing their pockets with bribe money in order to grant admissions ot unqualified students. Others seems to be innocently raising money for their program. The Stanford sailing coach accepted donations to the sailing program. His sport would typically look for athletic students without prior sailing experience. Though the program received donations, none of the donations went to the coach and none of the students were actually flagged and attended Stanford.

While the bulk of the scandal focussed on the nefarious activities of the wealthy and admission counselors, the college complex itself got off relatively scott free. Even worse, most of the students that got in via Singer were kicked out of the schools. (This despite the fact that they were succeeding academically and had little knowledge of the fraud used to get them in.) 

Universities themselves are perhaps the biggest fraud. They claim to be selling one thing at a price, but are really selling something else at a different price. Elite colleges are primarily selling a luxury good. The "ivy league" diploma is a status signal and a way to open doors to lucrative careers. They hope to receive significant monetary contributions to provide a four year "retreat" for the nation's rich and famous. However, they claim to be providing an egalitarian education for all of society. To help carry out this mission, they partner with the government to provide extensive financial aid for "disadvantaged" students.

Why all the subterfuge? Why not go totally aboveboard? Perhaps they just need to be like airlines and sell the same seats for different prices. Let students apply for the admission tiers. The $5,000,000 tier may be a lot less competitive than the $5 tier. However, by doing this, the university is more likely to pocket money from the wealthy without all the shenanigans. Instead of relying on test scores, the schools can focus more on actually knowing the students. Personal interviews can come in to the mix rather than SAT stores. 

The excessive professionalization of university sports is also a big problem. Football and basketball are practically farm teams for the professional leagues. There also tends to be more scholarship money available in sports than in other academic areas. This will continue to create much conflict in the university admissions. Is it time to disconnect sports from college? Or can it be scaled back to an extent that it is a useful form of physical education rather than an all-encompassing part of school?

Stoner

William Stoner grows up on a farm in rural Missouri. He is expected to continue working there. However, his father things it will be valuable for him to study agriculture at the university. He goes off to school does acceptable in his classes, but then takes the required English class. He struggles in the class. However, he eventually comes to appreciate the liberal arts and begins his life in academia.

World War I leads many students to enlist in the military. Two of Stoner's best "friends" enlist. Stoner, does not feel the call and instead desires to stay teaching on campus. One of the friends dies in battle. The other is able to supercharge is career by taking classes at Columbia.

He lives a life as a rather unremarkable academic. He gets married, but his wife is fairly distant. They do have a brief spurt of intense intimacy to have a child. However, his wife is initially uninterested in raising her. Stoner's father dies, but his mother just wants to remain on the farm with the hired help. His wife changes after his father commits suicide. She tries to "claim" their daughter and seeks to express herself with artistic friends. This further distances Stoner from his family and leads him to dedicate more to his work. He engages in an affair with an instructor who had audited one of his classes. This actually improved the relationship with his wife. However, it created conflicts in the department, and they ended the relationship. She would move away and later dedicate her book to him.

Stoner gets involved with academic political conflict. He flunks a student who is a "pet" PhD candidate of another professor. He later denies passing this student in the PhD orals. The professor goes nuclear on him for this. This professor becomes department head, making life miserable for Stoner by giving him a spaced out schedule of Freshman classes. Stoner eventually started teaching his graduate class content to Freshman, helping him to "win" a good schedule.

His life ended in a mediocre fashion. His daughter got pregnant. She married the boy and moved off with his parents. He enlisted in the military and died shortly after. She became an alcoholic and did not spend much time with her parents. Shortly before he reached retirement age, he discovered he had cancer. He was able to retire and then died shortly thereafter. His personal and professional lives were both a sad case of might have beens. 

As he is approaching retirement age, Stoner discovers he has cancer. 

The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us

Paul Tough explores the current world of college education and finds flaws all around. The story of the "welder" who gets a high paying job without going to college? Well, there are some high paying jobs around in big cities. But most of welding jobs are not in the "Super high paying" realm. The jobs also require going to school to become a welder. What about the worry that under-qualified low-income minorities are taking all the good college seats away? Colleges would love to have more low-income minorities. However, the primary "under-qualified" admits are of the "rich and white" variety. While admissions scandals brought attention to people paying thousands to get their kids into college via phony sports resumes, hey were just people trying to do it on the cheap. Many colleges have spots waiting for anybody waiting to donate a few million dollars.
He also debunks plenty of College Board propaganda. Standardized tests tend to benefit the wealthy that are willing to pay for expensive test preparation. Even the free SAT-prep offered by the college board is primarily used by those who need it the least.
Is college worth it? That also depends. The most prestigious colleges tend to lead to the best paying jobs. Even among the ivy league schools, there is a hierarchy of "the best" with the likes of Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and Yale up top. Employers use the caliber of school as a proxy of the best students. (Thus school admissions officers end up making decisions.) Extra circulars are also analyzed, though this often favors the wealthy. Lacrosse is preferable to football.
Even the minority students at elite schools are a mirage. Many of the ethnic minorities are the children of wealthy executives and immigrants. Poor students are likely to be those that attended elite prep schools on scholarship. Schools also work to manipulate the numbers. Students that just qualify for Pell grants are much more likely to be admitted than students that just miss the cut off.
The anecdotes are also enlightening. A student wanted to go to Penn or maybe Princeton as a backup. She got rejected by both. However, she ended up getting into Stanford - a school with a much lower acceptance rate. A master test prep consultant charges $400 per hour, and spends most of the time chatting with the students. He helps them to de-stress and minimize the importance of the test. He also teaches a few tips and tricks - and produces great results. The super-elite colleges spend a lot more per student on education, however, most of this comes from the endowment. The mid-tier schools need tuition money to survive. They play a complicated quantitative game of admissions. They must get the right mix of students that will generate income, while also having enough high-quality students. They dangle enough scholarship money to entice acceptance (and the tuition money that comes with it.) There was also the study that showed that letting poor students know about colleges led to more attending elite colleges that matched their scores. However, when the college board tried to repeat it, nothing much happened. There are other factors (such as family) that prevent poor students from attending the most elite colleges. However, the poor would benefit the most. The quality of college is strongly correlated with lifetime income. Across all incoming income levels, those that attend more elite schools will earn more. Those that come in wealthy will have some advantage, but those that come in poor will see the biggest increase in income. The logical path is to attend to best school you can get in to. However, high-performing poor are more likely to go to a nearby community college or state school (even if they could get a free ride to an ivy)
The college system could be a great equalizer. Instead, it just helps out the haves. What can we do about it?

The Secret History

Secret history reminded me of what high school friends expected of their immediate future. The characters are all very multidimensional. There was a murder, followed by another murder to get a blabber to stop talking. I wasn't sure if I wanted them to get caught or I wanted them to get away with it. (The author managed to get some form of compromise.) The book is a well written exploration of the struggles of young adulthood. As a reader you can see many easy ways out of various problems. However, the characters will go to great lengths to make things difficult for themselves.
The character of Bunny is perhaps the most negatively portrayed. He comes out as a stupid oaf, who almost begs to be killed. Yet, the characters are all friends with him. He is somehow in the ancient Greek class with them. He comes from a wealthy family, yet they give him nothing and he manages to mooch off everyone else (despite his elitist tastes.) The others, for the most part, come from wealthy families and just expect to have everything on a silver platter. The protagonist is an almost dispassionate observer, who is from a working class northern California home. He is remote from the east coast culture in both distance and temperament, yet gets sucked in to the whole adventure.