The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be

This book gave me an appreciation for the power of research to inform how we understand what is needed and how we can shape the future, particularly with something as complex as the future of higher education. I’m really happy I had the opportunity to read The Real World of College and I was moved by the rigor and simplicity of the authors’ approach. Fishman and Gardner examine the critical role that higher education can serve for students (particularly in the times we are living in), and do so in a way that examines deeply where students are coming, allowing the authors to offer practical solutions that connect the dots between our highest aspirations and the reality of students’ lives. The rigor is also in the breadth of the research, their broad examination of students’ lives the most pressing issues they face, and the all the stakeholders they consider as part of an ecosystem.Through their research, the authors uncovered four lenses or “mindsets” with which students think about and relate to college. Knowing how students fundamentally relate to college gives us fundamental information for how to engage with their reality. The book offers a way to connect our idealism for what education can accomplish to the reality, rather than pursuing an ideal that does not directly relate to the world of college.I worry that people will miss the deeper message in this book and underestimate the power of the practical suggestions offered by the authors. I worry about this because understanding the value of their suggestions requires that we take a more penetrating look at the purpose of a college education not just in how it will serve the individuals (prepare them for career, give them a broad education) but how it will meet this moment in history. It is only with this mindset that we can have room to consider the bigger implications and the foundational changes that we need to make and therefore appreciate the massive endeavor of the research that went into this book.This book makes a worthy case for the role of college because it addresses the real world of college, and considers the purpose of college in shaping the future. Even if in reading this book you think the ideas are difficult to implement, it is so powerful to have a “real” response to the role college can/should play today. At the very least it can engage us educators in an authentic dialogue and contemplation of the future of higher education. And at its best it can be a step towards a world where education can truly matter both for the future of the individuals and for our collective future.

There is a ton of information in this book and the authors seem to have put a great deal of effort into analyzing the results. It is unstructured data and the authors could have considered using an AI to tease out more results from the interviews. Overall it is a book worth reading.The authors obviously had a bias toward a liberal arts education. A broad academic focus that builds intellectual capital and produces well rounded individuals. A sentiment shared by most faculty they interviewed, but not by most students, parents, trustees or admin. It seems their bias toward faculty, of which they are members, skewed their conclusions of what college is and should be toward their desires of the ideal university.

This is one of the most important books in the field of higher education. Fischman and Gardner managed to captivate me from the first page until the last one. I loved how the language was easy to follow yet intricately woven to remind us that this is an academic publication. I am sure this book will be popular among policymakers, university leaders, and scholars, and I hope that they can start implementing the necessary changes laid out throughout the book as fast as possible. American higher education needs change and this book tells us why and where that change needs to happen.One last note: I love how the authors covered every single step of their research design and methodology, which enabled me to see the logic behind their approach, as well as behind their findings. I urge everyone in the field—and those who are in other fields as well—to read it and contemplate its findings.

I really enjoyed this book, I sometimes teach educational research, and I really was thinking that this book would be a good book to have students read, which is an overall good model of a qualitative large scale study. The authors do a really nice job of explaining their data, and discussing their own biases, it is written in a very easy to understand way for researchthere were a few decisions that they made in their study that I didn’t agree with, but they dealt with them in the epilogue. I haven’t looked yet to see if they’ve had this published in peer reviewed journals but I appreciate that they are creating an accessible version for people outside of our field.I had a few takeaways that I could use to inform my practice, the big one was about how there’s a disconnect between the reasons to going to college between undergrads, faculty, trustees and parents. In my role as a person who provides faculty professional development I’m going to explore that a little further.i wouldn’t recommend listening to it as an audiobook unless that’s how you listen to things. I have a PhD in education and so listening to it. I can definitely follow it. but if that’s not your background, it might be difficult. I listen to audiobooks as I exercise, and it did work out very well. I was a little disappointed at a few times when they said if you have a print book it’s on this page, but we’re skipping it now for example, the list of schools that they used was in the appendix at the end of the book. (however, part of their point was that they interviewed 10 very different schools, and their findings weren’t particularly about the school, but the type of beliefs and perspectives that people had.)