The Best Higher Education Books Of 2022

This year saw a number of outstanding books about a host of higher education topics, ranging from policy issues such as college costs and student learning to hot button subjects like academic freedom and online cheating. The list even includes one murder mystery. Here are my selections for the best titles in 2022.

Breaking Ranks: How the Rankings Industry Rules Higher Education and What To Do About It by Colin Diver, former president of Reed College. Diver has written a spirited, often witty critique of the college ranking industry, particularly the well-known “gorilla” of the neighborhood, U.S. News. He does a particularly good job of tracing the development of various ranking systems and exposing their methodological shortcomings along with the pernicious effects they – and their components like graduation rates, social mobility and graduates’ salaries – can have on institutions living “under their ominous, often oppressive, shadow.”

As the college ranking industry has grown, so has one of its spinoffs – critiques of rankings. As these critiques go, Diver’s is one of the best. He does more than carp about rankings. By situating them in the larger context of American higher education, he reveals how important, but insidious, they’ve become.

Who Killed Jane Stanford? by Richard White is part whodunit and part history of the troubled beginnings of Leland Stanford Junior University in Gilded Age California. White, an emeritus professor at Stanford, spins the tangled tale of the murder of Jane Stanford, who, with her husband Leland, dedicated much of their fortune to found Stanford University in memory of their deceased son. Stanford got off to a messy start, in large measure because of the eccentric beliefs and incessant meddling of Jane Stanford as well as the faults and duplicities of its first president, David Starr Jordan. While several suspects had motives to kill Jane, a murder that was hushed up for decades by Stanford officials, White assembles a convincing case fingering the most likely culprit(s).

The Complete Guide To Contract Cheating In Higher Education by Dave Tomar is the definitive book on contract cheating, where college students pay to have others write their assigned essays, papers and capstone projects for them. Tomar, whose public admission a decade ago that he was a well-compensated ghostwriter, earned him both the title of the “Shadow Scholar” and the widespread enmity of college faculty, blows the whistle on the contract cheating industry in this highly engaging, often disturbing, account of online cheating-for-hire.

Part confessional, part expose, this is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn the ins-and-outs of ghostwriting, the reasons why students cheat and how the problem should be understood and addressed. Grounded in a genuine concern about the pressures students face, a frank recognition of higher education’s contribution to the problem, and thoughtful perspectives on college teaching, this eye-opener of a book grabs your attention and never lets go.

Leadership Matters: Confronting the Hard Choices Facing Higher Education by two former college presidents – W. Joseph King (Lyon College) and Brian C. Marshall (Bucknell University and Washington and Jefferson College) – discusses how higher education leaders can help institutions adapt to the changing economic, social and political forces that increasingly challenge them.

They describe three presidential types: the presider, the change agent and the strategic visionary and offer wise counsel about the relationships that presidents should have with two other senior campus leaders – the provost and the chair of the board of trustees – as they face “the challenges of the post-pandemic world.” This book offers thoughtful advice for both novice and experienced campus leaders, particularly in the areas of shared governance and constituent relationships.

Phillip B. Levine’s A Problem of Fit: How the Complexity of College Pricing Hurts Students – And Universities examines the confusing issue of college pricing. Levine, the Katharine Coman and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, explores how colleges set their prices as well as how financial aid systems contribute to problems of access. Providing detailed economic analysis of the effects of sticker price, tuition discounts, merit and need-based financial aid, and institutional competition, Levine contends that the overall impact from these multiple factors is to limit access to higher education for lower-income students.

He takes specific aim at the problem of opaque financial aid and how it serves to heighten inequities in higher education. And he offers an excellent discussion of the pros and cons of two major policies for improving access to college – the various versions of “free college” and a significant increase (read: doubling) of Pell Grants – before discussing why he prefers the latter.

The Real World of College: What Higher Eduction Is and What It Can Be by Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner. Based on more than 2,000 interviews with students, faculty, staff, parents and other stakeholders at ten institutions ranging from highly selective colleges to less selective universities, the authors explore how colleges achieve (or don’t) what they contend should be higher education’s ultimate goal – the cultivation of Higher Education Capital (HEDCAP) – the “ability to attend, analyze, connect and communicate on issues of importance and interest.”

Students varied considerably in acquiring this higher-order cognitive skillset, with about a quarter showing high levels and about a quarter evidencing low levels. Those with higher HEDCAP tend to approach college with mindsets that emphasize exploration (learning new ideas) or transformation (questioning core beliefs) rather than inertia (an extension of high school) or transaction (obtaining a tangible ROI, such as a good job).

The authors contrast the HEDCAP impact of different colleges and among various groups of students and recommend how colleges can enhance student learning, addressing the two “most surprising” discoveries typifying students at the ten schools – concerns about mental health and feelings of isolation and alienation.

Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson’s Can College Level the Playing Field; Higher Education in an Unequal Society is a sobering analysis of the role higher education plays in correcting and contributing to inequality in our society. The authors argue that when it comes to leveling the playing field higher education has an important role to play, but that role is constrained by other forces that must be addressed – namely, the many inequalities in the pre-college lives of millions of students and the unfair conditions they’ll later face in labor markets, economic policies and social institutions. Dismissive of quick fixes, the authors offer several policies to strengthen higher ed’s contributions to more equitable outcomes.

Will Bunch’s After the Ivory Tower Falls is a thought-provoking portrayal of the role that higher education plays in fueling the nation’s stark political divisions that seem to grow ever-more intense. Bunch, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, argues that at several key points since World War II, opportunities to firmly establish U.S. higher education as a vehicle for social mobility were missed – largely for political reasons – resulting in it becoming as much a source of social alienation and resentment as of equality and the American Dream.

Written with the verve and historical details one expects from an expert reporter like Bunch, the book offers a well-informed, albeit occasionally hyperbolic, take on the “college problem” and how to fix it.

Another hard-hitting book – Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us by Evan Mandery – provides a scathing indictment of how elite colleges contribute to the nation’s increasing social and economic inequality. Claiming that the “United States maintains an apartheid educational system,” Mandery, a John Jay professor of criminal justice and himself a Harvard College and Harvard Law School graduate, pulls no punches in castigating elite colleges for how they perpetuate a system that favors the wealthy and discriminates against the poor.

Whether it’s through college admissions, intercollegiate athletics, standardized testing, or campus culture, Mandery takes elite colleges to task for how they insure the success of the wealthy, often at the expense of poor people and people of color. He closes with several recommendations for incremental remedies to the inequities that elite colleges continue to indulge.

Michael Berube and Jennifer Ruth’s It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy and the Future of Academic Freedom addresses the question of what academic freedom does and should protect – and what it does not and should not protect. Drawing careful distinctions between free speech and academic freedom, they contend that an “excessively libertarian” understanding of academic freedom, often confused with an absolutist position on free speech, needs to be rethought and replaced with less traditionally liberal policies.

The authors question just how far academic freedom should extend, particularly when it serves to protect racist ideology in academia. An example: “White supremacy is baked into the foundations of some academic fields in this country, and it remains a powerful obstacle to any attempt at honest and free intellectual exchange…”

Having lost faith in the ability of the marketplace of ideas to defeat ridiculous claims, Berube and Ruth call for universities to differentiate between “legitimate ideas and utter bullshit.” A provocative read, with practical suggestions for how to put faculty back in charge of defending academic freedom as well as preventing its abuses.

Becoming Great Universities: Small Steps for Sustained Excellence by Richard J Light and Allison Jegla offers dozens of practical suggestions for low-cost policies and practices that campuses can use to improve student learning and engagement.

The book considers “practical answers to quite predictable questions” and calls for campus cultures that embrace innovation, test new ideas and work toward constant improvement. Included are topics such as helping students cope with the “hidden curriculum” to encouraging simple experiments with new classroom teaching techniques, facilitating constructive interactions between students from different backgrounds, and designing assessments of student learning that faculty will respect.

My sleeper book of the year is Sam Stern’s Bernard Daly’s Promise: The Enduring Legacy of a Place-Based Scholarship. It’s an inspirational tale about how Bernard Daly, an Irish emigre to the U.S., established a college scholarship for high school students in Lake County, Oregon with a million dollar bequest in 1920. Now – more than 100 years and 2000 recipients later – Stern, the retired dean of Oregon State University’s College of Eduction, shows how one frugal man’s philanthropy changed – and continues to change – the lives of so many individuals. A terrific read, as heartwarming as it is scholarly.

Honorable Mentions:

Learning With Others: Collaboration As A Pathway to College Student Success by Clifton Conrad and Todd Lundberg. Based on a study of 12 Minority-Serving Institutions, the authors argue that collaborative learning should be emphasized at the core of undergraduate education.

The Tuskegee Student Uprising: A History by Brian Jones. A history of Black student protest and the Black Power movement as it unfolded at one of America’s most important HBCUs.

The Secret Syllabus: A Guide to the Unwritten Rules of College Success by Jay Phelan and Terry Burnham. Written in a refreshingly conversational style, this book offers students advice for how to understand what many will encounter as an “alien” culture upon entering college and how to navigate the unwritten rules and expectations that are key to college success.

The New College Classroom by Cathy N. Davidson and Christina Katopodis. A practical guide to more effective and engaged college teaching, with an emphasis on how to promote active learning among college students.

Who Should Pay, by Natasha Quadlin and Brian Powell, examines the question of who should pay for college and explains how the tide of public opinion about the responsibility of individuals versus government financing of a college education has shifted over the past decade.