A rancorous but focused treatise on college admissions process reform.
A blistering takedown of the admissions process at elite academic institutions.
Connelly, the dean emeritus of Golden Gate University’s business school and a father of five, examines what he calls “the black box” of elite college admissions in order to reveal how it perpetuates socio-economic inequality and has even driven some teens to suicide. The book is split into three sections: “The State of Play in the Admissions Game,” “The Dark Side of Admissions,” and “How To Blow Up the Elite College Admissions Black Box and Reopen the Front Door to Social and Economic Mobility.” Each repeats the same arguments, noting how the admissions process works and asserting that it has a negative impact not only on students, but also on the country as a whole. Many of Connelly’s points are well taken, such as that students from lower incomes are at a disadvantage, in part, because they must take out loans that saddle them with crushing debt and that students from wealthier families have such advantages as the ability to send kids to “feeder schools,” which act as direct gateways into elite colleges. These notions will come as little surprise to many readers; however, the author also provides research and his own firsthand experience as a father to support his claims. He also examines the problem of admissions from several angles, showing how the system is economically, socially, and personally problematic; at one point, for instance, he sharply notes how colleges employ “sophisticated marketing techniques that exploit the anxieties of children and their parents in order to achieve a self-inflating and essentially meaningless aura of ranked selectivity.” The book ends with practical, actionable steps on how to create a fairer and more balanced college admissions process.
A rancorous but focused treatise on college admissions process reform.Pub Date: June 25, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-65-203600-3
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Strictly for dittoheads.
An unabashed celebration of the late talking head.
Rush Limbaugh (1951-2021) insisted that he had a direct line to God, who blessed him with brilliance unseen since the time of the Messiah. In his tribute, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis calls him “the greatest broadcaster that [sic] ever lived.” That’s an accidental anointment, given checkered beginnings. Limbaugh himself records that, after earning a failing grade for not properly outlining a speech, he dropped out of college—doubtless the cause of his scorn for higher education. This book is a constant gush of cult-of-personality praise, with tributes from Ben Carson, Mike Pence, Donald Trump, and others. One radio caller called Limbaugh “practically perfect” and a latter-day George Washington by virtue of “the magnetism and the trust and the belief of all the people.” Limbaugh insists that conservatives are all about love, though he filled the airwaves with bitter, divisive invective about the evils of liberals, as with this tidbit: “to liberals, the Bill of Rights is horrible, the Bill of Rights grants citizens freedom….The Bill of Rights limits the federal government, and that’s negative to a socialist like Obama.” Moreover, “to Democrats, America’s heartland is ‘flyover’ country. They don’t know, or like, the Americans who live there, or their values.” Worse still for a money machine like Limbaugh, who flew over that heartland in a private jet while smoking fat cigars, liberals like Obama are “trying to socialize profit so that [they] can claim it”—anathema to wealthy Republicans, who prefer to socialize risk by way of bailouts while keeping the profits for themselves. Limbaugh fans will certainly eat this up, though a segment of the Republican caucus in Congress (Marjorie Taylor Greene et al.) might want to read past Limbaugh’s repeated insistence that “peace can’t be achieved by ‘developing an understanding’ with the Russian people.”
Strictly for dittoheads.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 9781668001844
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An unassuming work of literary theory that will dazzle hungry scholars.
A shimmering and perplexing work that challenges the constraints of traditional prose.
In her finely tempered collection of essays and experimental writing, Dutton, author of Margaret the First, explores a conceptual take on storytelling involving the ineffable feeling of a text, beyond mere words. Her work is highbrow while remaining mischievously playful, reminiscent of the form-smashing thrills of writers like Lydia Davis and Anne Carson. The first section, “Prairie,” features five abstract stories that eschew plot in favor of hazy, memoir-like fragments. The poetic and peculiar “Dresses” is an artfully arranged list of excerpts from poems and novels that include mentions of a dress. Despite the content coming from outside sources, their collaged curation transforms the texts into something unsuspectingly resonant. The revelatory essay in “Art” helps unlock Dutton’s puzzles. Here, she discusses contemporary art and the practice of ekphrastic writing, a technique that not only describes visual art in words but also aims to render in language and tone how a work makes a person feel. The author explains her interest in writing a text that can expand beyond its edges and open “a space within which we attend to the world.” “How might a story embody a specific way of looking?” she asks. “Other” further develops these ideas. In the short narrative “Not Writing,” Dutton briefly discusses the minimalist paintings of Agnes Martin and how scholar Olivia Laing noted “they aren’t meant to be read, but are there to be responded to.” Dutton asks, “Is it wrong to want to write towards what isn’t intended to be read? What I want is a story that’s an object that can turn itself inside out.” The author not only introduces big ideas; she shows her readers how to grapple with her lofty questions.
An unassuming work of literary theory that will dazzle hungry scholars.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781566897037
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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