Book Review: The Five-Year Party

I've decided to put to use my love of reading by reviewing the books I read (for better or for worse).

Today we review: The Five-Year Party By Craig Brandon (subtitled How colleges have given up on educating your child and what you can do about it).


                                                                          

Rating: 6 out of 10

Pros: Makes good points.  Presents good specific facts.  Has a passion for improving our education system.
Cons: Rinse, lathers and repeats the same points over and over.  This book could easily be 100 instead of 200 pages.  Also, seems to hold a belief at 18-23 year olds are children which drives me a little bit crazy (not a lot crazy, just a little bit).

Craig Brandon's book the five year party comes both from his experience teaching at a sub-par university and research about other sub-par schools.  He discusses how colleges have gone from being run by experts in education to experts in business.  How student loan and credit card companies (aka large banks) are allowed to ruin the lives of students.  How crime on colleges often goes unreported and how universities cover up crime and how university cities might be some of the most dangerous places in the United States.  How schools spoil students in order to keep the students parents handing the school money.   And perhaps ,as the title of the books says, the schools try to keep students at the schools longer to keep extracting more money from the parents.

I found the book interesting and some of the stuff in the book surprised me, but I can't say anything in the book shocked me; after all I went to UVA.    




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