First topic of IDEA: American Higher Education

My expertise is specifically in College Admissions, but I think this will be a good start to lead into other issues such as scientific brain-drain in America from Andrew Foley and social inequality with its roots in higher education from Colleen Shandley.

My expectations for this topic: This subject is not exactly the intellectual debate that IDEA is based on. My goal is for all of us to develop a general understanding of the crucial system of higher education which we are all coming surprisingly close to having to deal with. I think the best of all worlds would be for each person to read one book on the process and then a few ancillary articles. The goal for this topic is to really increase your understanding of college admissions and to benefit you each individually. Simply reading an article will not be enough for you to reach an appreciation for or understanding of how higher education functions.

I will be posting a list of articles on more specific topics soon, but until then, try to pick one of the following books and locate it. It would be really convenient to read one over break, as they are all fairly reasonable at about 250 pages. Though the books and articles I'm going to recommend are generally about admissions, they touch on a broad range of topics.