The controversial book that crystallized the current debate over the value and purpose of a college educationWhen Professor X's article that inspired this book was published in the Atlantic Monthly, a firestorm of controversy began as teachers across the country weighed in, some thanking him for his honesty and others pillorying him for his warts-and-all portrayal of the downside of universal college enrollment. The article was chosen by David Brooks for a Sidney Award, given to the best magazine articles every year, and kicked off an anticollege backlash.
Professor X is an adjunct professor of English literature and composition, a member of the poorly paid underclass who are now teaching the vast majority of our college courses. This is the story of what he learned on the front lines of America's academic crisis.

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: The Truth About College

Biographies & Memoirs

PROFESSOR X

Professionals & Academics

Penguin??Books

A caustic expose of the deeply state of our colleges-America's most expensive Ponzi scheme. What drives a former English major with a creative writing degree, several unpublished novels, three kids, and a straining marriage to take a job as a night teacher at a second-rate college? An unaffordable mortgage. As his house starts falling apart in every imaginable way, Professor X grabs first one, then two jobs teaching English 101 and 102-composition and literature-at a small private college and a local community college. He finds himself on the front lines of America's academic crisis. It's quite an education. This is the story of what he learns about his struggling pupils, about the college system-a business more bent on its own financial targets than the wellbeing of its students-about the classics he rediscovers, and about himself. Funny, wry, self-deprecating, and a provocative indictment of our failing schools, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower is both a brilliant academic satire and a poignant account of one teacher's seismic frustration-and unlikely salvation-as his real estate woes catapult him into a subprime crisis of an altogether more human nature.

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic

VIKING

PROFESSOR X makes the case that college teaching is little more than a shell game, a complex, if cheap, swindle, and that the Ph.D. amounts to little more than a license to steal.

This Beats Working For a Living: The Dark Secrets of a College Professor

Arlington House

Never At A Loss For An Opinion is a satire on the so-called scholarly world. It stings. Professor X dips his pen in acid as he surveys the cant phrases now fashionable on campus. He shows how professors are thieves - of their ideas, their lectures, even the postage on their letters. Above all, he hammers at mediocrity.

Never at a Loss for an Opinion

There are numerous prelaw books. Some are written by former students; a few are written by professors. This book is written, pseudonymously, by a 20-year veteran law professor and dean with behind-the-scenes knowledge of admissions.Law School Undercover offers students the straight truth they will get nowhere else—not in books and not even in direct conversations with law professors and deans. How? Because this is written pseudonymously, after Professor “X” realized his advice to his own daughter departed radically from his advice to students. This book is his apology. All law students will benefit from his inside, “underground” advice. Law School Undercover covers all aspects of law school, from selecting the right law school to admissions to first year to law review, moot court, and though graduation and jobs. Professor “X” reveals tricks-of-the-trade in admissions, based on years of experience in making these decisions; he discusses the best approaches to classes, exams, and law school activities; he discusses a rare third method for gaining acceptance to law review; and he lays out career options as no one else has.

Law School Undercover: A Veteran Law Professor Tells the Truth About Admissions, Classes, Cases, Exams, Law Review, Jobs, and More

Business & Money

Job Hunting & Careers

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