Presents a collection of essays that explore a college education as a means through which serious-minded individuals broaden their minds and acquire life skills, arguing that higher learning is an essential remedy for today's problems.

A critical analysis of American education states that poor motivational techniques and a lack of focus are at the core of most problems and offers four methods that can be implemented to promote education reform.

From the founder of Harvard's Change Leadership Group comes a provocative look at why innovation is today's most essential real-world skill and what young people need to become innovators. Reveals the importance of innovation in American global competitiveness, profiling some of today's most compelling young innovators while explaining how they have succeeded through the unconventional methods of parents, teachers, and mentors.

"The cost of a college degree has increased by 1,125% since 1978 - four times the rate of inflation. Total student debt is $1.3 trillion. Many private universities charge tuitions ranging from $60-70,000 per year. Nearly 2/3 of all college students must borrow to study, and the average student graduates with more than $30,000 in debt. 53% of college graduates under 25 years old are unemployed or underemployed (working part-time or in low-paying jobs...

"The prize-winning PBS correspondent's provocative antidote to America's misguided approaches to K-12 school reform During his four-decade career at NPR and PBS, John Merrow reported from every state in the union, as well as from dozens of countries, on topics including America's obsession with standardized testing, the low standards of many teacher-training institutions, how corporate greed created an epidemic of attention deficit disorder, and Michelle...

What is the value of a college degree if it leaves you with few job prospects in a tough economy and buried in debt? This book asks the burning question on every prospective student, parent, and new graduate's mind. Student loan debt in the United States crossed the $1 trillion mark in 2011. To say that the cost of a four-year college education is inflated on many campuses would be an understatement, and that education bubble is about to burst. He...

"In an entirely fresh take on school reform, business journalist and bestselling author Andrea Gabor argues that Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and other leaders of the prevailing education-reform movement have borrowed all the wrong lessons from the business world. After the Education Wars explains how the market-based measures and carrot-and-stick incentives informing today's reforms are out of sync with the nurturing culture that good schools foster and--contrary...

Presents a striking picture of the elements of contemporary public education that conspire against the prospects for poor children of color, creating a persistent gap in achievement during the school years that has eluded several decades of reform.