Review of *What’s the Point of College?*

The question that historian Johann N. Neem seeks to answer in his latest book is in its title: “What’s the point of college?” He draws on a combination of his expertise on the history of American education, his decades of experience teaching college, and ultimately his earnest care for reaching an answer. For Neem, the answer is that higher education does indeed have meaning beyond career skills, financial incentives, and other practical objectives. Indeed, the pursuit of learning is a virtue that cultivates each willing student to be better.

Better for what? Just better. And that is precisely the point: no additional objective in particular is necessary for higher education to be meaningful and valuable. Neem’s claim does not detract from the real concerns of career and finances. Rather, he takes seriously these issues by contemplating what is best for students.

Neem organizes this book into four thematic sections: Context, Curriculum, Teaching, and Scholarship. Through these, he builds a case for his own philosophy of the meaning of higher education. Chapter one, “On Disruptive Innovation,” contends that higher education should change in accordance with the outside world instead of caving to it. Chapter two, “On Recent Occasions,” provides case studies of the public higher education systems in North Carolina and Maryland. Chapter three, “On For-Profit Schools,” lambasts the infamous for-profit higher education industry where institutions like Trump University have charged lofty tuition without giving to students the learning and thinking that higher education ought to provide.

Section two bears out Curriculum through chapter four “On STEM,” chapter five “On the Humanities,” and his especially radical chapter six “On Business Majors.” Neem’s interpretation of STEM is that it is crucial to the arts and sciences, as long as STEM students learn far beyond professions like coding and engineering. He notes that he was almost a geology major. Neem is likely at his best in “On the Humanities,” in which he historicizes the humanities and social sciences and situates them phenomenologically. Writes Neem, “shift from literary skills to philosophical knowledge took place first in royal scientific academies, in coffeehouses, and in salons in civil society before it hit the universities” (59). This chapter is where he writes that “skills are not just transferable; they are also devoted to ends. To what ends are colleges developing in students the skills of close textual analysis and writing? Why do we want students to become critical thinkers?” (67) These questions are central to this book. Finally, “On the Business Major” resembles Neem’s Chronicle article “Abolish the Business Major!” in which he argues that it epitomizes problems in contemporary higher education.

Section three, organized into chapters “On Time and Experience,” “On Online Education,” and “On Critical Thinking,” makes a case for the classroom as an ideal space for intellectual growth and learning to happen. For most academics and other intellectual types, the classroom is already special, almost sacred. Still, Neem explains for everyone why time in the college environment and especially in the classroom space is imperative. For Neem, too much of college happens through credits earned before college or online during it. Writes Neem, “by caring about the material and about students, teachers create a connection between the two” (86). Regarding the classroom and teachers, this is one of the most convincing sentences in the book. He continues, “they do not simply provide content but rather offer contexts for understanding. By watching others care deeply, students start to see why what seems unrelated to them – what seems academic – can actually shape their relationship with the world” (86-87). In this section, Neem challenges readers to care.

Chapter ten, “On the PhD,” chapter eleven “On Research,” and chapter twelve “On Academic Writing” comprise the final section, which will captivate readers interested not only in the future of higher education, but also the future of academia as a profession. Neem suggests that treating doctoral work more as a form of ministry and less as a vocational degree. He argues that research is valuable in the long term, sometimes even without immediate accessibility. His view on academic writing is similar: without underestimating the value of accessibility, sometimes a scholar’s prose seeming inaccessible to people outside of their field is fine. Neem cannot predict the future, but he offers some compelling possibilities in this section.

Neem engages simultaneously with age-old philosophy and with contemporary explorations of the meaning of higher education.  He considers the American philosopher John Dewey’s pragmatism, which he understands through its relationship to utilitarianism: maximizing utility. Neem advocates instead for an older approach: Aristotelian virtue ethics. Neem’s book builds upon related work on similar topics: On College: What It Was, Is, And Should Be by historian Andrew Delbanco and Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters by Wesleyan University President Michael S. Roth, in 2012 and 2014 respectively. What is especially new about Neem’s book is its backdrop: the vast majority of scholars in the United States seem to desire radical change in reaction against President Trump’s administration. Unlike a tendency toward the status quo during President Obama’s administration, Neem’s approach might reach more willing ears than Delbanco or Roth’s did. Neem mentions the most federal policies in the “On Time and Experience” chapter regarding well-intentioned Obama-era programs to reduce the cost of – but by extension the time spent in – college.

What’s the Point of College? Seeking Purpose in an Age of Reform cannot escape a shortcoming that plagues higher education itself: the challenge of convincing people to care. If readers open this book excited about classrooms, critical thinking, higher education, and learning, then it will only strengthen their passion and resolve. Many chapters like “On the Business Major” carefully disseminate before annihilating counterarguments. While the book is engaging, sincere, and thoughtful, a more skeptical reader might remain unconvinced by the evidence. Yet, if Neem preaches slightly to the choir, then that choir of academics, intellectuals, scholars, and students alike is powerful with unlimited potential to change the world.