In The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us, bestselling author Paul Tough re-evaluates the state of higher education across the United States. Does college still work? What are the flaws in our current system? And how can we do better?
“In an increasingly pessimistic country with fewer manufacturing jobs than decades ago and a widening chasm between the haves and have-nots, college looms enormous in young people’s psyches. But the mechanics of getting to and through it are messier than ever,” writes columnist Frank Bruni in his latest opinion piece for The New York Times. In it, Bruni discusses the new book by Paul Tough, an author renowned for his previous work How Children Succeed. Tough’s latest release The Years That Matter Most—hitting shelves September 10th—explains how higher education evolved from a rational decision yielding a promising return on investment, to a necessity to simply keep us afloat. “Today, for many young Americans, a B.A. is simply an insurance policy against moving down,” Tough writes.
The Years That Matter Most is filled with anecdotes that illustrate what an anxiety-inducing experience has become for many students, but also offers an alternative vision for the future of education. Bruni writes, “Among his book’s many vital contributions are its portraits of schools and programs that model a better way.”
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