In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic by Professor X

Apr 17, 2011 Kathrina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs-bios, books-that-changed-me

I spend a lot of my time thinking about my education; thinking about how smart I am (or not), how educated I am (or not), in relation to others and in relation to my own expectations. I have a bachelor's degree from a fairly well-respected university, I've dabbled in graduate courses, alternate bachelor programs, both at the same university and it's little brother community college. My parents were well-educated, and I was raised to expect a college career. I sell books for a living. At a chain....more I spend a lot of my time thinking about my education; thinking about how smart I am (or not), how educated I am (or not), in relation to others and in relation to my own expectations. I have a bachelor's degree from a fairly well-respected university, I've dabbled in graduate courses, alternate bachelor programs, both at the same university and it's little brother community college. My parents were well-educated, and I was raised to expect a college career. I sell books for a living. At a chain. A nation-wide leader in book sales, but a store in the mall, after all. I read what I sell, I love what I sell, but I'm just selling it, not teaching it, not editing it, and not writing it. And my paycheck comes, whether or not I sell it exceptionally well or just well enough. Although it happens fairly rarely, I love answering the question "What have you read and loved lately?" Unfortunately, I am more often asked "Where is your non-fiction section?", and this by seemingly mature, well-educated patrons whom one would assume had a fair acquaintance with the varieties of non-fiction and the basic layout of any bookstore. Even more disheartening is the frequent puzzlement in the face of the customer unfamiliar with the definition of "non-fiction." "But it's a history of dragons. It's research!" Of course I cannot claim to be an expert in every field for which I sell a book. If you require a medical text or the latest research on peak oils, I am happy to use the database before me along with any details you can supply, and I will defer to your judgment of the best title available. But, unlike selling shoes or novelty beer steins, I am daily confronted with products of knowledge, a vast array of the world's information set down on paper for the ages, from what we as a people feel is innovative, worthy of remembering, entertaining, elucidating, smart, or funny. From fixing your plumbing to elevating your soul (be it Dante or Bombeck), I am selling it. Thinking about how much I know is something I do every day.

And here comes Professor X. Neither is he at the top of the educated elite, not a tenured professor, nor even on the tenured track. He has not published the novels he expected he would, has not lived the academic achievements he had once envisioned for himself. And yet he's spent his career teaching his passion, although he's done it in community college basements and dark high school classrooms after hours, and usually to students unwilling to be there. He posits that the majority of his students, enrolled because they need the artificially inflated certificate to pursue their career, have no business in a college writing course; they did not meet high school writing standards when they graduated, and they will not need college writing standards to become nursing aids, police officers, and mechanics. Their money, time, and energy are wasted on skills they do not need and do not have the academic background to accomplish. This critique, at first, seems harsh and oh so un-American. Obama himself is preaching the need for higher education available to everyone. But Professor X, through persuasive comparison, observation, cited statistics and a bit of personal memoir, convinced me that his job as adjunct is a filler for the huge gap between optimistic American opportunity and the too-true fact that not everyone is college material. But everyone can easily acquire massive amounts of student loan debt, whether they graduate or not, and, in community college, most do not. Professor X compares this education "bubble" with the housing crisis of the last decade, as the Bush administration pushed the middle-class towards home ownership -- affordable housing for all, heedless to the fact that one shouldn't own a home one can't afford. It's so obvious, but we refused to see! But if feels so good to offer a beautiful home to a well-intentioned family, as it feels good to offer previously inaccessible educations to well-meaning, aspiring young people.
At times, Professor X's writing got a bit circular, as he covered the same laments from a dozen different angles. His tone ranges from empathetic to cocky to whiny. But his thesis is persuasive, and I feel his pain. As long as the Mexican standoff continues between colleges vs industry vs under-prepared students vs American idealism, at least Professor X has job security, where most of us don't, even with certificates and diplomas in hand. I've got my share of certificates, but I keep going back for more, as this retail gig looks a bit tenuous these days. We'll keep selling copies of Catcher in the Rye to nursing students, Don Quixote to forensic aid students, and, now and then, a copy to someone who wants to read it.
And now I'm working towards a graduate degree in library science. After 11 years in bookselling, I'm wondering how much the degree will make me a better book-person, teach me information I couldn't learn on the job, but in this job market, I can't even get an interview in this college town without a degree. I chose an English degree back in the early 90's, when earning a useless degree didn't much matter, as long as you earned something. Nobody asked me, "Just what do you think you'll do with an English degree?" Reading books seemed a cozy way to get through the 4+ years I was expected to endure. I was able to pay my tuition with only a handful of aid, paying term to term, with part-time work, in a way that is unfathomable today. A senior in high school today better know just exactly where they're going before those bills start coming in. There's no time for lazy English majors now. So what do I expect for my kids? I can't expect them to pay for it term to term; I won't be able to do it, either. Will a bachelor's degree be worth the price paid? Will it make their lives easier or more burdened? Can I practice what I preach and allow my sons to put off college (perhaps forever) until they know what they want, like I wished I had done? Non-traditional, middle-aged students are becoming more common than ever, as jobs require more certifications, companies downsize, adults switch careers in the middle of their lives, excessive debt requires promotable skills or second jobs. Professor X makes some surprising conclusions, perhaps some that are controversial or inconsistent, but he's raising some issues we all need to think about, as students, as parents, as optimistic Americans who may have an unrealistic view of what we are capable and what we desire. (less)

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May 26, 2011 Barbara rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think there are some points here with merit, although ultimately the main argument is shaky. What really makes me roll my eyes, however, is this guy's RIDICULOUS sexism! He blames his real estate woes on an inexperienced female inspector, when he would have preferred a nice old man. He blames grade inflation on the rising number of female college professors, and thus the "feminizing" of grades. In an unintentionally hilarious anecdote about a pair of dating students in his class, he blames the...more

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May 20, 2013 Merrikay rated it 3 of 5 stars

Professor X is an adjunct instructor at both a small private college and a community college. He writes about his experiences teaching when his poor financial decisions make a second job necessary. It turns out after years of this work that he comes to love it, despite it being the low man position at colleges and poorly paid, with no benefits. Adjuncts are often the stepchildren, given little support from the administration and little office space, if any. That is common knowledge. For the reco...more

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Aug 06, 2012 David rated it 2 of 5 stars

kind of interesting observations from a decade of adjunct-teaching of intro level english classes, at night, at two colleges (one a community college). Apparently grew from a magazine article against which there was some backlash. May have been preferable to leave it at an article. This may be a function of my being a college teacher, but I didn't need quite so many anecdotes to convince me that....

(a) many new college students are poor writers
(b) many students enrolled in required courses are u...more

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May 22, 2012 Elliot Ratzman rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: teachers

“College isn’t for everyone” seems to be the moral of this book, based on a widely read Atlantic article. The anonymous author is an adjunct at a small-town college and a community college who teaches basic English at night. Most of his students are terrible writers and few read non-assigned books, but all have to take his course in order to jump through the hoop of some sort of degree. Prof X thinks it is a waste of these nurses, policemen, and technical workers’ time and, often, his. The book,...more

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Dec 13, 2011 Ilya rated it 3 of 5 stars

The pseudonymous author has an MFA degree in Creative Writing; he has taught middle school but disliked it, and became a government employee instead; the book does not specify his exact duties. After he and his wife bought a house they couldn't really afford, he decided to make an extra buck by teaching night school as an adjunct. He has been teaching English 101 and 102 in a small private college and in a community college; later he was also asked to teach a class in journalism and one in busin...more The pseudonymous author has an MFA degree in Creative Writing; he has taught middle school but disliked it, and became a government employee instead; the book does not specify his exact duties. After he and his wife bought a house they couldn't really afford, he decided to make an extra buck by teaching night school as an adjunct. He has been teaching English 101 and 102 in a small private college and in a community college; later he was also asked to teach a class in journalism and one in business communications. The vast majority of his students have no interest in learning; they just want to become nurses and policemen and HR specialists and medical lab technicians. These jobs require a college degree, which demands a certain number of general education classes, including English. With few exceptions, his students are semi-literate and ignorant; one thought that a story involving a bus ride to the YWCA is set during the Civil War; another thought that the ACLU is a trade union; on a quiz asking whose ghost appears in Hamlet another answered, "Shakespeare's"; an essay of yet another was "a hallucinogenic lit-crit puree of Finnegans Wake and Bridezillas." Almost none read for pleasure. And why should an emergency room nurse who puts an IV needle into the vein of a crash victim care about Sylvia Plath and Margaret Atwood? She won't perform her duties better if she does. Yet in order to become one, a young woman needs the diploma, and the English class, and if she cannot write, she will fail if not the author's class, then another "gatekeeper" class. Everyone from President Obama down tells young Americans that they ought to go to college; the German system of directing most young schoolchildren into the vocational track and a few into the academic track seems un-American. So they arrive in college, only to discover that the vast majority of them are not ready to do college-level work. An old Soviet joke went, "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." The students pretend to learn, and the author pretends to teach them at the college level. (less)

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Aug 23, 2011 Chuck rated it 3 of 5 stars

Tenured faculty are a vanishing breed as colleges and universities strive to save money by hiring part-time faculty like "Professor X" instead. These "adjuncts" not only receive considerably lower salaries; they also live without job security and often without any benefits. They are frequently marginalized by "regular" faculty, crammed into shared office space, excluded from department meetings, and denied faculty voting privileges. Because student evaluations play a major role in determining wh...more Tenured faculty are a vanishing breed as colleges and universities strive to save money by hiring part-time faculty like "Professor X" instead. These "adjuncts" not only receive considerably lower salaries; they also live without job security and often without any benefits. They are frequently marginalized by "regular" faculty, crammed into shared office space, excluded from department meetings, and denied faculty voting privileges. Because student evaluations play a major role in determining whether adjuncts are re-hired, there can be a significant temptation -- even if unconscious -- to award inflated grades (although Professor X denies that he succumbs to any such pressure).

In short, adjunct faculty have plenty to complain about, and Professor X does his share of that. Surprisingly, however, the bulk of his complaints are less concerned with his own inferior status than they are with his inferior students. As a part-time English instructor at two lower-tier institutions (one 4-year and one 2-year), he laments the large number of students who are woefully unprepared and often, it appears, irremediable. They can't construct a coherent sentence; they can't spell; they can't think critically; they have no prior acquaintance with good literature; they don't have a clue about traditional scholarship or the procedure for writing a research paper. Even so, Professor X evinces a certain amount of empathy for these unwashed masses -- folks who are often going to school part-time and struggling to make ends meet. The larger problem, he argues, is that colleges are expanding their enrollments at an unconscionable rate, and consequently, a college education has become a prerequisite for many jobs that have no business requiring one. Of course, the expansion of colleges is a boon to adjuncts like X, since someone has to teach the burgeoning numbers of students (many of whom never make it to graduation).

Denizens of upper-tier institutions are doubtless worlds apart from the woeful scenarios that Professor X lays out. I suspect that no Ivy League faculty member -- tenured or temporary -- will ever encounter a student like the one who inhabited an introductory course that I taught some years ago at a rather non-selective university. This student confidently pronounced that Socrates and the Wright Brothers were contemporaries, and when asked to investigate the matter further using the library (this was pre-Internet), he reported that he could find no materials relevant to the topic. In "for-profit" colleges, such an experience would probably be routine. Some of those awful places are actually now under Federal investigation, and while they clearly benefit from swelling enrollments, it's not clear that anyone else does. Meanwhile, the escalating cost of college tuition everywhere results in substantial student debt -- debt that is all the more difficult to discharge from a low-wage job that may represent the end of the rainbow for someone foolish enough in the 21st century to have majored in English or history or philosophy.

Despite Professor X's argument that many jobs have undergone unnecessary credential creep, there's a case to be made that this complaint embodies an unduly narrow view of vocational preparation. Computer programmers whose technical studies are supplemented by humanities courses will be better equipped to consider the ethical and social consequences of the code that they write. Military personnel who possess some understanding of archaeology and art history could be expected to take a greater interest in protecting the contents of museums from wanton looting. Employees in service sectors would surely benefit from a background in psychology when they seek to sooth angry clients. And so on. Finally, despite what one might gather from the current political climate, education isn't just about jobs. Given that a viable democracy presupposes an electorate that is capable of evaluating arguments and validating sources of information, colleges and universities are not simply cranking out future employees; they are also inculcating skills that are needed for effective citizenship.

Professor X's provocative book is long on identifying problems and short on offering solutions, and he ostentatiously burnishes his observations with literary references that are apparently designed to show how deeply literature is integrated into his own life. Maybe he's counting on his book to serve as an application essay for a better academic appointment. Whether or not it succeeds in that regard, it does offer an insider's view of what contemporary higher education often looks like once one descends below the ranks of the elite, even stopping well short of the "basement".(less)

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Aug 07, 2011 David Sawyer rated it 3 of 5 stars

Professor X challenges the American notion that everyone should go to college, and that everyone who can sign a loan application is college material. It's a very thought-provoking thesis, and one that's hard to argue against. The college degree is losing its value partially because it's so frequently misused as a minimum qualification for jobs that probably don't need it. Police officers, video store managers, nurses, car salesman... these jobs cover a wide spectrum of specialized skills and kno...more

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Jul 29, 2011 Marks54 rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a fairly short book discussing the underside of academia - the life and labors of a long time adjunct instructor of English composition. It is an expansion of an earlier magazine article. The picture is not pretty. Not everyone is meant to attend college and many come without the skills or habits necessary for success. Adjuncts like Professor X are the gatekeepers for this rabble who must try to teach these hard cases while maintaining academic standards. It is often a losing battle. The...more This is a fairly short book discussing the underside of academia - the life and labors of a long time adjunct instructor of English composition. It is an expansion of an earlier magazine article. The picture is not pretty. Not everyone is meant to attend college and many come without the skills or habits necessary for success. Adjuncts like Professor X are the gatekeepers for this rabble who must try to teach these hard cases while maintaining academic standards. It is often a losing battle. The plight of perpetual adjuncts is also an issue here. Most college faculty on non tenure track and thus little different in status and pay as Professor X. Pay is low, hours are long, and security is nearly absent. Professor X ends up standing by his standards, bemoaning his status but acknowledging that he enjoys teaching, and excoriating a system that lets anyone come to college who can pay.

The descriptions in the book generally ring true. There is much work in the trenches in teaching at so-called colleges and most faculty have their stories to tell on this. Some critics place the blame on Professor X, but the account rings true as one of a capable person trying to do this best against long odds. Trends in academia are towards greater use of adjuncts and less attention to standards - this is especially a problem with proprietary schools. The case that nonTT faculty are being exploited can be made and it is troubling, especially when it becomes clear that this is the business model to which more schools are going.

On the negatives, Professor X is a bit too self-satisfied at times and if he does not like the pay, he should stop teaching. The equity issue troubles many in academia and some are trying to find a way to bring adjuncts into the fold, pay them better, and build career development paths for them. This is hard in the current budgeting hellscape, but some folks are trying.

Overall, if you are in academia, this will not provide a lot of new insights, but it is an informative and interesting read that makes its case fairly well.(less)

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Jun 08, 2011 Wanda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Highly readable for the most part. I think that I liked this book so well because it reflected my own experience as a professor -- and I am a full tenured professor and not an adjunct. Students' lack of basic skills and their inability to construct a coherent sentence, never mind an argument, is nothing short of astounding.
The author's thesis is that there are many students who are in community colleges who are ill prepared for college and have little chance of success because they lack the foun...more Highly readable for the most part. I think that I liked this book so well because it reflected my own experience as a professor -- and I am a full tenured professor and not an adjunct. Students' lack of basic skills and their inability to construct a coherent sentence, never mind an argument, is nothing short of astounding.
The author's thesis is that there are many students who are in community colleges who are ill prepared for college and have little chance of success because they lack the foundation to be a college student. He takes to task the notion that with enough remediation anyone can overcome (in a scant 15 weeks) years of inattention to the basics of reading and writing. I agree and I think that the fatuous ultra left radical elite who clobbered him in his article published in the Atlantic are full of blank blank blank. I say this and I am a tried and true liberal of the left persuasion.
Sorry guys, but reading politically charged prose in (great works) literature classes at the expense of learning LITERATURE and structure does no one any favors. It simply fosters victimhood. And, passing along students because they are who they are is just as obnoxious as the blue blood's gentleman's C. There. I'm glad I said it.
Professor X takes on a lot of issues. First the false notion that everyone is college material, the avant-garde notion that grammar (sentence structure, diagramming, parts of speech, etc.) does not matter, the issue of students being encouraged to enroll in college and spend thousands of dollars that they can ill afford on their education when they have a snow-ball's chance in hell of finishing, plagiarism, remediation. For anyone who wants to know what it's like to teach college students in the second millenium, this is the book for you: the frustration, the guilt at having to fail students, the knowledge that no matter how well one teaches, one has only the options of passing them along or failing most of them. It's all there.
What I would add to what Professor X says, however, that there are those of us in the professoriate who have actually taught graduate students like this. How about that for a scary thought? AND many have been pressured to change grades or to ratchet down standards by administrators who are more interested in the bottom line, and enrollment, than quality. I too have had students who plagiarized and then lied about it despite the faculty member having the evidence in front of the. I too have had students IN GRADUATE school who write incoherently and do not know what a verb or a subject entails. I too have had students who cannot follow simple directions about a research paper or formatting. The fact that Profesoor X has as an adjunct, is one thing. The fact that I have is quite something else.
This is a wake up call about the perpetuation of a great fraud on students both by way of elementary and high schools and colleges. Everyone has failed here when students are admitted to programs and are unable to write a clear sentence. After all writing is thinking made manifest.
The downsides of this book are the author's meanderings into creative literature and the narrative concerning his mortgage and his house. Both were tangential to the real issue here - the failures of American edication.(less)

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May 16, 2011 Nick rated it 3 of 5 stars

There are some real problems here -- the strained analogies between his university teaching and his mortgage, the sexism he seems totally unaware that he possesses, the back-and-forth between trenchant criticism of universities and the more personal stories -- but the overall critique of the mainstreaming of college makes a lot of sense. If nothing else it was truly refreshing to hear Professor X give voice to what many college instructors (of the adjunct level or not) already know: many of thei...more

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Apr 03, 2011 jen8998 rated it 3 of 5 stars

A new adjunct professor finds that few of his students are able to write a coherent essay. He concludes that very few students are prepared for the demands of higher education and wonder whether America is doing students a disservice as many fail to graduate yet are burdened with student loan debt. Topics range but the author is at his most aggravating when discussing grade inflation. Apparently after surveying female adjuncts of his acquaintance, he has concluded that since women are a) more em...more

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Apr 22, 2011 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Melissa by: Kathrina

I sit at a remove from Professor X's students. It was assumed from a very young age that I would attend college at a top tier school (or at least, as top-tier as my parents' could afford); I went to a state school, graduated with no debt in four years because 1) I was driven and 2) my parents could pay for the tuition out of pocket. When medical school applications didn't pan out (after three attempts) I earned a Master's in epidemiology (while working full-time) which led to my current job and...more I sit at a remove from Professor X's students. It was assumed from a very young age that I would attend college at a top tier school (or at least, as top-tier as my parents' could afford); I went to a state school, graduated with no debt in four years because 1) I was driven and 2) my parents could pay for the tuition out of pocket. When medical school applications didn't pan out (after three attempts) I earned a Master's in epidemiology (while working full-time) which led to my current job and (decently) comfortable paycheck. I plan to go back to school for advanced coursework in English literature. I never had to take a basic College Writing or College Literature class because I took AP English Lit and passed the exam with a "3" - when I did take an English course in undergrad (for fun) I opted for a semester of Shakespeare. I have a lot of education because I'm smart and I had the right skill-set for college (knowing my study skills were poor, I actually read books on how to improve my study skills - I'm not kidding). In the Basement of the Ivory Tower speaks to the murky underbelly of the college system, those students who will mostly likely not go on to be doctors, CEOs, or professors and the adjuncts who teach them.

This book is hazy with anonymity; we can't compare Professor X's students with other schools' studentds because he won't tell us for fear of recrimination. I wish that Professor X could have written this book without the anonymity, although I do agree, based on the criticism he received from the initial magazine article, that it is necessary. There seems to be a lot of heads-in-sand about his stance: commenters imply that he is maligning his students by failing them, that he's not actually teaching or helping them adequately, that he doesn't care.

Newsflash: if Professor X didn't care about his students, he wouldn't have bothered to write In the Basement of the Ivory Tower. If anyone is in doubt as to the poor learning skills of Professor X's students and his almost paralyzing decision to pass or fail them, I back him 100%. In my persona as a moderator of an online bookclub I am swimming in poorly written prose - both original compositions posted in the writing room and posts as part of book discussions. God forbid I should actually tell someone that his or her post is unintelligible and makes no sense (an issue completely divorced from the issue of atrocious grammar and spelling); it is apparently "mean" to criticize. There are some who probably view Professor X as "mean" because he does attempt to hew to the standards of college-level work; he doesn't just pass them because he wants to be "nice".

Standards are at the core of the book, that students who barely function at a level appropriate to high school, or lower, grade-levels are pushed to attend college with no thought as to the actual preparation of the students. These students need remedial course work, but receive no credit for it in their degree paths so therefore don't bother nor does the college enforce this, and the connection between their career path and the college writing/literature work is tenuous at best. Adjuncts are not paid for office hours, have no place to meet with students, and often don't have time allotted by the school to give the level of personal instruction that academically disadvantaged students need. Professor X worries, how are students with rudimentary communication skills being served by this drive to send everyone and their neighbors' dog to college? It's a valid worry.

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower raises many issues and we, as a country, should seriously take a look at student debt and college requirements for job placement, at the educational system as a whole from preschool through college. Where I think this book falls down is in a lack of proposed solutions, beyond revamping the American notion of success-through-college-is-the-only-way-to-go, and in the tone of the author. What is Professor X's solution for underprepared students, beyond not forcing them to take college English? I really was not interested in Professor X's anxiety about his house or his fights with his wife; those chapters detracted from his arguments about the college system. I also felt that the quibbling over grading - do students get the "F" that is deserved under the college standards or do they get bumped up to a "D" or "C" because of improvement/situation - could have done without the tone of smarmy self-assurance implied in the many chapters. There are issues barely touched on - such as the rise of blantant plagiarism and students' seeming indifference to getting caught or the out-of-touch anthologies he is required to use as textbooks - that need more expansion. Faults aside, this book is a "whistleblower"; we need more whistleblowers and fewer heads-in-the-sand.(less)

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May 13, 2011 Alice rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: financial

The book jacket intrigued me. And although the author states that the book is about how he began teaching as an adjunct in order to pay his mortgage and, therefore, a book about what happened to him during the housing bubble and the state of higher education, it turned out to be more a book about his experience teaching. Every once in awhile he talks briefly about the real estate end, mainly how it was a mistake for him and his wife to have bought their house, the strain it caused on their marri...more

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Aug 10, 2011 Dan Sussman rated it 3 of 5 stars

In "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower," Professor X writes spends a few pages discussion the problem of "grade inflation" in the schools at which he teaches. I must plead guilty of doing the same here. I gave this frustrating mish-mash of a book 3 stars, but I think I was being overly generous.

This book is an expansion of an article X wrote for "The Atlantic" a year or two ago and, while I didn't read the original, I have to think that inflation to book length didn't do his readers any favors....more In "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower," Professor X writes spends a few pages discussion the problem of "grade inflation" in the schools at which he teaches. I must plead guilty of doing the same here. I gave this frustrating mish-mash of a book 3 stars, but I think I was being overly generous.

This book is an expansion of an article X wrote for "The Atlantic" a year or two ago and, while I didn't read the original, I have to think that inflation to book length didn't do his readers any favors. The thesis at the core of this book (at least I think it's the thesis. The professor wanders all over the road, so it's hard to tell much of the time) is that many colleges -- particularly the two-year community colleges -- are populated by students who are barely qualified for high school, let alone higher education. What's more, many of the students who attend required classes, such as the English 101 and 102 courses he teaches, don't really need them. Fair enough. Here and there, he makes a good case for these arguments.

Unfortunately, what could have been a pithy, fully examined look at this topic is, instead, a meandering, repetitive mess in which Professor X whines endlessly about his disappointments in life (the novels never published, marital strife caused by the house he and his wife can't afford without his having to teach in the slums of higher education, etc.) Boo-hoo, and get over it! I'm an adjunct instructor at a local community college and damn happy to be there. True, I'm not teaching writing and literature to students who wouldn't know a topic sentence if they tripped over it, but for better or worse, that's the name of the game. Maybe it's because I used to be a middle school English teacher, and tutored English at the community college level, but I had no illusions going in about the quality of the work I'd be seeing from students. That's the way it is, professor! Teach, shed a little light where you can, or take steps to change the nature of the community college. Do or don't do, but stop whining!

When he does actually focus on the dilemmas surrounding student quality, the growing demand for workers with degrees -- whether they truly need them or not, and the growth imperative for colleges of all sizes -- Professor X's work is worth reading. I recommend that anyone who picks up this book skip straight to the back, read Chapter 21, and call it a day. Keep in mind, however, that he proposes no answers to the problems he illuminates. Amid all of the whining, I had hoped that he'd come up with something constructive. But like so much else associated with this book, the result was disappointment.(less)

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Aug 21, 2011 Margali rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Some essays are meant to BE essays, and not be expanded into books. I haven't yet read the article that inspired this book, but I'll be interested to see how it compares. This book feels bloated and a little self-indulgent. The cover flap says, "This is the story of what [the author] learned: about his struggling pupils, about the college system -- a business bent on its own financial targets -- about the classics he rediscovered, and about himself." The problem is that there is too little in he...more

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Jun 28, 2011 Mitchell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, public-library

This book appeared on my to-read list as part of a discussion as to the value of college. The book is purportedly written by an adjunct English teacher at a community college too afraid to use his real name. The author is a stuck up snob and yet most of the book is written so beautifully, it is easy to see the writer's craft in effect.

So what grade are you supposed to give someone in college English 101 who starts the class at a 6th grade level and ends at a 10th grade level? It is a fair argum...more

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May 27, 2011 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011

A few years ago I tutored high school kids for one of those high-priced college-prep learning centers you see advertised on billboards. For $175 a session, each kid received a highly-personalized battery of one-on-one tutoring from folks like me. Most of the kids I tutored needed serious help in one or more areas but over time showed definite improvement; a handful weren't far off at all but needed some tweaking here and there; one was already getting better SAT scores than I would ever get no m...more A few years ago I tutored high school kids for one of those high-priced college-prep learning centers you see advertised on billboards. For $175 a session, each kid received a highly-personalized battery of one-on-one tutoring from folks like me. Most of the kids I tutored needed serious help in one or more areas but over time showed definite improvement; a handful weren't far off at all but needed some tweaking here and there; one was already getting better SAT scores than I would ever get no matter how many advanced degrees I piled up, but was after a perfect score. Now and then, though, I came across kids who were -- and there's no other way to say it -- hopeless cases. They were so deficient on such basic levels that I felt inadequate to the task.

One student in particular sticks in memory. It was almost the end of the school year, and my boss asked me into her office. She introduced me to the student, a jocular, all-around Good Guy, and told me that rather than the months-long, specialized program most kids were on (all the better to bilk their yuppie parents out of their money), this one was going on the fast track; we were going to condense 5 months of programming into about 3 weeks. Okay, I said, let's give this a shot.

Within 10 minutes I knew bringing this kid to competence would be a Herculean task. The sample essay he had written during the diagnostic exam could only vaguely be called English, and his expression as he endured these 3-hour sessions never budged from its already-defeated, utterly-bored grimace. I said the word 'pronoun' and he looked at me as if I'd conjured it up. As we dug in and tried to move through the material swiftly, a series of thoughts sprung to mind: Why does he want to go to college next year? (Sub-question: Why are his parents making him go to college next year?) Shouldn't he take a year or two and build himself up remedially? No matter which college he goes to, he will be asked eventually to write a paper, and he can't write on a sentence level, let alone a paper level, and it's going to take more than 3 weeks to get him there. Why would he want to go to college only to struggle and fail out after a year?

Then I thought even more selfishly: What if he doesn't fail out? What if he actually gets a degree with this caliber of writing? What is my degree worth if all you need to get one these days is show up?

It is with this in mind that I approached Professor X's book about his travails as an adjunct professor for a community college. The students he runs up against are just like the student I tried valiantly to help during the twilight of his senior year, except he has to take actual college time to go over stuff that he rightly expected them to learn in high school. The issues he raises are timely and important (and not going away): Does everyone have a right to higher education in this country? What are the consequences of expecting everyone to obtain degrees for jobs that wouldn't seem to require them to do the jobs well?

My own feeling is that this is the little-talked-about underbelly of the American Dream: We have a collective allergy to anything that reeks of elitism, and who's going to be the one to tell someone else he doesn't have what it takes for a college degree? And in a time when many of our blue-collar jobs are going by the wayside, what other options does a job-seeker have BUT shell out the cash, sit mindlessly through classes that hold no interest for them, and wait for a school to pump out a degree?

The book loses steam in the second half, which seems like SOP for books that have been expanded from magazine articles, but at least in its first half, it provides ample food for thought.

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Mar 18, 2012 Rebekah Tilley rated it 4 of 5 stars

I picked this book up on a whim off the new nonfiction shelf at the library. It was like running across a clearance sale on Le Creuset: unexpectedly fantastic. Love the writing, love the story and appreciate how someone, somewhere had to word vomit on the parallels between the housing bubble and what is becoming the higher education bubble.

He rather missing the mark on critiquing the nursing profession beginning to require BSNs - there is a good bit of research that found patient mortality and...more

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Sep 15, 2011 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: dcar, 2011

do i give 3 stars, for the very same "pedestrian writing style" that the author admonishes his student for, or 4 stars because it made me think and sparked discussion multiple times since i began it 2 days ago? interesting conundrum.

ultimately, this book made me think. are our young people really prepared for college? with relaxed admissions policies at community colleges, does that mean that we have to let go of all standards entirely? what about the inflation of jobs requiring degrees? if ever...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: academia

Meh. I like the idea of this book, and the author is a good writer, but in general it was pretty smugly certain it held at least most of the answers to "why is academia broken?" When, in fact, it really is one scholar's experience in a specific situation (adjunct, evenings-only professor in two community college settings.) I think the author has many valid points and certainly has hit the proverbial nail on the head concerning why his students don't seem to be very good writers, but overall I do...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the few books, outside of James and the Giant Peach and The Great Gatsby, that I felt compelled to go back and read again not longer after I finished it the first time. The first-person, anonymous memoir by an adjunct professor teaching students who are wholly unprepared for college and being loaded with debt is a deceptively elegiac ode to literature and writing. The author may have set out to write an indictment, a j'accuse, of the college boom and all that goes with it. But he wrote a...more

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Apr 27, 2011 Lyndon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: cultural-criticism

What would it take for this book to be written without the (apparent) need for anonymity? In the Basement of the Irony Tower is a lightly nuanced critique of the economics of education, more than simply the conditions of college education. It is a story about a house mortgage, education debts, and earning potential before it is a story about a failing culture of inclusive higher education. Professor X seems satisfied with himself as an instructor, but less so as a bread-winner. Anonymity is prac...more

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Aug 04, 2011 Lisa rated it 1 of 5 stars

I was pretty disappointed with this book. It really wasn't what I thought it would be. I found myself struggling to get through the chapters, some of which were excruciatingly long.

What's frustrating as a book purchaser is that this book had the potential to be really great. I agree with Professor X that not every person is "college material" and that not every person who enters college is ready for the work. I found myself wondering, though, if the bigger problem is the colleges hiring people...more

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Jun 09, 2011 Maggie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, read-in-11

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I expected this book to be eye-opening and thought-provoking, but overall I was disappointed by it. It's easy to point out the flaws in our higher education system. Anyone who's spent enough time in a classroom--as TA, as adjunct instructor, as full-time lecturer or professor, maybe even as student--can see the problems. It's much more difficult to offer suggestions on how to start trying to fix the system, which Professor X doesn't do here.

He has no formal pedagogical training and seems for muc...more I expected this book to be eye-opening and thought-provoking, but overall I was disappointed by it. It's easy to point out the flaws in our higher education system. Anyone who's spent enough time in a classroom--as TA, as adjunct instructor, as full-time lecturer or professor, maybe even as student--can see the problems. It's much more difficult to offer suggestions on how to start trying to fix the system, which Professor X doesn't do here.

He has no formal pedagogical training and seems for much of the book to not even like teaching, let alone feel passionate about it. Late in the book, he even admits he often doesn't think of himself as a successful teacher but that he keeps teaching the way he does because it's easy for him. All of this plus his pen name led me to feel like he simply wanted to cash in and to see his words in print (remember that he's a failed writer, after all) without having to be held accountable for what he's written. I didn't consider him an authority or a reliable narrator at all, and that made this a tough read for me.

Professor X would most likely have never set foot in a classroom had he and his wife not gotten in over their heads with a mortgage they couldn't afford. Immediately that rubbed me the wrong way. I'm a little above an adjunct now, but not by much. I have many friends and colleagues who put in long, unrecognized, and low-paying hours as adjuncts not to help them continue living beyond their means but simply to help them meet their basic needs. That's the side of adjuncting that I think people need to read about, but he doesn't even acknowledge it.

The book doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. It's part memoir, part exposé, part pedagogical explanation. Professor X tells stories, but not usually not particularly engaging ones. He's obviously done his research, but he pulls together material from so many different sources that after awhile it started to seem like he was saying "Look at all these things I've read!"

Again and again, he claims that our nation's higher education system is failing those who enroll in two- or four-year schools with little chance of being able to succeed. I agree with him about that; many times I've watched ill-prepared students struggle and fail no matter how much I've tried to help them, and it's always something that bothers me. He also complains about so many jobs requiring at least some college experience. What he seems to fail to realize, though, is that if the system changed, he and many other adjuncts nationwide would likely be out of jobs.

I gave this book two stars because as much as I disliked it, it made me think about the problems in our education system and about my own pedagogy. (less)

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May 01, 2011 brian dean rated it 4 of 5 stars

I gave it four stars because I see great relevance with my own teaching position. Otherwise, the discussion about his life choices and family problems - though well-written - didn't appeal to me and took a little away from the book.

I was also disappointed in his overly florid prose, brimming with metaphor and allusions to literary classics. Perhaps he was working to defend employment; a sort of "Look at me! I know books! I really am a good teacher."

I do think he is a good teacher and I intend t...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Laurel rated it 1 of 5 stars

I was somewhat disappointed in this book.

When reading Professor X's account of his experiences as an Adjunct, one must remember that his perspective is that of someone who is teaching adult learners who are seeking credentials, rather than the typical undergraduate. Although he outlines the demographics of his students, I think that someone who is not familiar with higher education can get caught up in the rhetoric that paints the typical undergraduate as not prepared for basic writing and lite...more

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Jun 05, 2012 Rozzer rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: general-non-fic, reviewed, own

This is a three-star book, to which I added a star out of sympathy for the author.

Make no mistake. Most of this book is NOT "the truth about college." Most of this book is a memoir, not about college but just about American middle class life in the period 1990-2010. Poor Professor X. He got his B.A. in English and even took an M.F.A. in writing. And then waited on tables while writing a book, which was rejected. After which he got a government job and together with his wife raised his family in...more This is a three-star book, to which I added a star out of sympathy for the author.

Make no mistake. Most of this book is NOT "the truth about college." Most of this book is a memoir, not about college but just about American middle class life in the period 1990-2010. Poor Professor X. He got his B.A. in English and even took an M.F.A. in writing. And then waited on tables while writing a book, which was rejected. After which he got a government job and together with his wife raised his family in a succession of houses which he describes in detail. Ultimately, to keep the pot boiling, he got a second job teaching a required writing course to first year students at a community college. Writing 101. And his students, class after class, were just terrible.

The article on which this book is based discussed the realities of written language for first year students at two-year schools, which aren't pretty. The article got a lot of press, and Professor X decided to turn it into a book, the book! His first published book! Well, apparently he didn't want to do a research paper and scour the landscape for material relevant to what had been his article in order to properly inflate his article into a book. No. He used the opportunity to wax eloquent about his own life and struggles. You can't blame him. The poor bastard had idolized books and writing all his life, just like a large percentage of us right here on GR. So he turned the article into a memoir.

Various readers on Amazon and similar places have complained about this. They're miffed that the book isn't entirely about teaching today's college students. But what do you expect from a (terribly) frustrated would-be author? It's sad, really. Not the fact that he decided to pad out his article into a memoir. Not the fact that he at last got an opportunity to do "creative writing" and see it in print. But the fact that after having done so he was revealed publicly in his book, to himself and to his readers, as a not very interesting person, the same kind of everyman that most of us are. That smarts. (less)

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Jan 07, 2012 Kathleen rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book describes an adjunct professor's experience teaching literature at a couple of unnamed community colleges. He describes his frustration at his students' low level of interest in literature as well as their lack of ability in literary analysis. At the same time, he recognizes that many of them are in professions where they don't really need a particularly high level of facility with literary criticism. This book sprang from an essay in The Atlantic, which sparked a great deal of critici...more

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May 05, 2012 Sara rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: education-academia, memoir, nonfiction

A memoir of an adjunct English professor, this is also a critique of higher education and the contemporary expectation that every American is entitled to a college education. The book does begin to ramble a bit at the end, and some sections are repetitive, with the author continually hammering at a few favorite points. Still, for those who may be oblivious to the current state of affairs in the academic realm, or who want a glimpse into what is really happening in remedial and general education...more

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