Introduction

Every summer, thousands of students and their parents make a pilgrimage to colleges and universities in an expensive, time-consuming effort to learn more about their top picks. Campus visits reveal first-hand the classrooms and laboratories, dorms and dining halls in which students will spend the next four (and, increasingly, five or more) years living and learning. From such an experience even the casual visitor will take away fodder for the imagination: tree-lined sidewalks, science labs filled with equipment, state-of-the-art sports facilities, and residential halls that are increasingly inviting.

The alert visitor, however, will be curious about those features of campus life that are more important, if less obvious, than buildings and grounds. Indeed, curiosity is the most important virtue a student can bring to the classroom. And that virtue is best rewarded when students devote considerable time to studying the liberal arts and sciences, for it is from these disciplines that one amasses sufficient knowledge for the skill of critical thinking to emerge—a feat unobtainable in an intellectual vacuum. Keep in mind that not all books are created equal and seek out wise counsel, such as that found in A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning by James V. Schall, S.J., of Georgetown University. You'll find more information on this and other valuable educational resources from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute at the end of this guide.

How to Use this Guide

Students and their parents must learn how to discover the truth about America's colleges and universities so that they can make informed decisions about which college to attend, and what to expect once they've chosen. The first two sections, Academic Life and Student Life, suggest questions to be asked of student tour guides, professors, and administrators. Each question is followed by a brief explanation of its importance—a key feature of this brochure that will give you valuable insight into the workings of the modern university. A word of advice: Questioning on-campus representatives is a delicate matter that you should approach with savvy and tact. Don't assume that tour guides, in particular, will know the answers to some of the questions that follow. After all, they are often young students themselves and may have never thought about the problems this brochure raises. Therefore, you should be prepared to seek out professors or administrators, who will be better able to address the issues raised in these two sections. Remember that there is little to be gained from appearing belligerent or aggressive. In fact, parents who appear too combative may hurt their children's chances for admission. Be polite, size up every encounter individually, and base your assessment on the totality of your on-campus experience.

The final section, the Red/Yellow/Green Light advisory, is intended to inform you—prospective students and their parents—of some widespread political problems affecting campus life. Such issues are controversial and difficult to raise without making the questioner appear overbearing, especially if asked of a student guide leading a group of parents and students. Other official campus representatives are unlikely to acknowledge the existence of such problems. Used discreetly, however, this knowledge allows you to spot problem areas on any campus.

Academic Life: Key Questions

QUESTION: What percentage of classes is taught by teaching assistants (TAs) in the first two years of classes? What is the percentage in the third and fourth years? Who is doing the grading?

EXPLANATION: At many schools, particularly large state universities and research institutions both public and private, professors are recruited and retained by reducing (or even eliminating) their teaching loads. Therefore, undergraduates may be taught by graduate students in their twenties working their way toward a Ph.D. rather than by the famous professors lauded in university literature. Pay particular attention to freshman and sophomore classes, where the use of TAs is greatest. The question of who is reading, grading, and commenting on written papers is especially important to a student's education. There is simply no substitute for the knowledge and expertise of a mature faculty member. And where tenure is decided primarily on the quantity of publications rather than the quality of a candidate's teaching, professors have a disincentive to pursue excellence in teaching.

QUESTION: Is there a true core curriculum made up of required courses across the liberal arts and sciences that all students must take, or do you instead rely upon distribution requirements that allow students to pick and choose from among numerous courses within a given discipline?

EXPLANATION: Most schools long ago abandoned their core curricula, which required each student to take a series of broadly informative courses that ensured that everyone emerged widely educated in the arts and sciences regardless of his or her academic major. Many colleges falsely state that they have a core curriculum when that is not at all the case. If your sources answer this question affirmatively, ask them how many choices exist within each disciplinary requirement. If the answer is more than one or two, there is no core curriculum worthy of the name.

QUESTION: Must all students study Western history and literature?

EXPLANATION: When the core was abandoned, most schools still required students to take history and literature survey courses that exposed them to the broad sweep of our civilization's accomplishments. Today, however, an increasing number of schools have made these courses optional. Therefore, many students graduate without ever studying the history or literature of the West. Students may often study cultures or works of literature that are either best left to more specialized studies or that do not merit serious academic attention.

QUESTION: Is a course on American history required for graduation?

EXPLANATION: The study of American history has disappeared from many schools' graduation requirements in much the same way Western history has been removed from the required curriculum. While the absence of such courses from the required list does not mean that they are not available, it does reveal an administration lacking commitment to foster in its students an understanding of our nation's past.

QUESTION: To what extent are students advised by faculty members? If faculty members are not advising students, then who is carrying out this important task?

EXPLANATION: Many colleges assign graduate student advisors or employ professional advisors, thus fulfilling, on paper, an important obligation. Yet these advisors often know little about the particular courses in which a student may be interested, or are professional "educrats" with little qualification for their job. Professors, on the other hand, are best qualified to advise students which courses and professors to take, as well as to offer insight into academic majors, internships, and postgraduate study. Of course, even assigning professors sometimes fails to guarantee access to good information. As documented in the Chronicle of Higher Education, some faculty members are often difficult to track down and hold infrequent office hours. Who your advisor is will impact your life during and after college. Choose wisely.

QUESTION: On average, how many years does it take to graduate? What percentage of freshmen graduate at all?

EXPLANATION: Universities often fail to offer required courses in numbers sufficient to accommodate every student's needs. Courses fill up and leave students with no recourse but to spend additional semesters, and even a fifth or sixth year, fulfilling graduation requirements. Parents must pay more in tuition, while students postpone entry into the workplace and often assume additional debt. This administrative decision also increases the demand for teaching assistants, thus justifying universities' large doctoral programs while relieving professors of their obligation to teach. Everyone wins but the student (and parent).

Student Life: Information to Gather

QUESTION: Can a student be assured of securing a room in a single-sex dorm or a substance-free dorm if desired? Are bathrooms coed?

EXPLANATION: Many colleges today offer only coed dorms. Some have single-sex floors within dorms, while others are single sex by room. Yet others have shared bathrooms—toilet areas and showers shared by both sexes.

QUESTION: Can a student be assured of living on campus each year if he or she so desires?

EXPLANATION: Living on campus is a very important element of the college experience. It places students in closer proximity to one another and to campus events and is therefore key to the development of a close-knit campus community. Dorm life also exposes students to others from varied backgrounds and with diverse interests.

QUESTION: Are there substance-free dorms?

EXPLANATION: Responding to demands from both students and parents, some schools have established special dorms, or floors, whose residents agree to abstain from alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. These areas provide a welcome relief for students seeking a more civil lifestyle in residence halls.

QUESTION: Is there any mandatory student orientation that exposes students to sexually explicit material or graphic explanations of sexual practices?

EXPLANATION: Films that most parents would consider pornographic are often shown during orientation. Practices that violate family morals may be presented in positive terms or even advocated.

QUESTION: How much crime is there both on and adjacent to campus?

EXPLANATION: Some schools engage in statistical high jinks in order to hide the true crime rate from parents, students, and donors. For example, schools often ignore crimes committed in areas immediately adjacent to campus—surely a distinction without a difference—in order to lower the apparent crime rate.

Red Light/Green Light: Free Speech and Fair Play on Campus

ISSUE: Speech codes operating under the guise of sexual harassment codes.

EXPLANATION: During the late 1980s and early 1990s, many schools instituted speech codes that sought to intimidate into silence any students or professors who questioned the emerging politically correct orthodoxies. A public outcry ensued, colleges lost several important court challenges to the speech codes, and administrators publicly distanced themselves from speech codes in name but not in practice. Today, the same degree of intimidation is achieved through so-called harassment (or sexual harassment) codes. While purporting to protect students, these codes in fact are used by schools to silence or punish those who disagree with politically correct mandates.

ISSUE: Ostracizing or punishing students for speaking their minds when they disagree with received academic opinion.

EXPLANATION: Numerous examples exist of official harassment of students who voice dissenting opinions on matters ranging from the importance of feminist scholarship or the morality of affirmative action to questions of religious beliefs and sexual propriety. Beliefs associated with traditional virtues are sometimes ridiculed and even banned. Defending your beliefs in the face of criticism is part of the college experience; facing official sanction for voicing them is unacceptable.

ISSUE: The politicization of the curriculum. For example, American history courses that cast the Founding in a dark light, push socialistic views of the economy, or claim that the Cold War was a U.S. scheme to rule the world, are politicized.

EXPLANATION: Course titles can be misleading. A class titled "American Revolution" may neglect the causes of the Revolution, the search for constitutional order, or the sacrifices of the founding generation. Some professors will instead teach the entire period through the lenses of race, class, and gender and claim that the Founders worked only to ensure their own well-being. Such efforts to de-legitimize the Revolution are increasingly common among historians.

ISSUE: The lack of intellectual diversity within academic departments. New faculty members are often expected to share the political opinions of their colleagues.

EXPLANATION: Radical faculty have consolidated their hold on many departments by gaining control of the hiring process for new professors. By hiring only those who share their politically correct views, they reduce opposition to their own schemes involving persecuting dissenting colleagues, ridiculing religion, offering only highly politicized courses, or harassing students who speak out against them. This is one of the most disturbing trends in higher education.

Doing Your Homework

In addition to this brochure, there are other sources you should mine. In addition to college guides and recruitment literature, college web sites and the university bookstore are especially important. Visit the school's web site and look at course offerings in the departments of English and history, two bellwethers of a school's curricular trends. Many schools post syllabi on the web, and you can learn much from perusing these sources. Look for classes that cast their subjects in the language of victimology. Course descriptions or readings that employ the terms race, class, gender, and other chic terms usually indicate a high degree of politicization—the substitution of politics for genuine learning. In the campus bookstore, visit the course readings section. You may gauge the quality of departments by the number of politicized works assigned. Note titles that condemn America and the West, deconstruct literature, or celebrate political action over rigorous study. A preponderance of such books reveals a department run by professors who would rather indoctrinate than educate.

Turn to ISI for Guidance at Each Stage of Your College Career

Start with Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth about America's Top Schools, written by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) staff. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University calls it "by far the best college guide in America," and World magazine says that "If prospective students and their families want a critical look at what is taught at America's most powerful and celebrated schools, Choosing the Right College may be their only guide."

Get a jump on your classes with ISI's Student’s Guides to the Major Disciplines, which the Wall Street Journal says "come close to constituting mini-great books in themselves." These guides are written by distinguished scholars who introduce important fields of study and list recommended readings. You may purchase these guides individually or as a set. At collegeguide.org we also encourage feedback from parents and students who consulted this pamphlet or Choosing the Right College. When visiting that site, we hope you will let us know how these resources were, or were not, helpful to you in your college search, and will share with us your experiences with colleges that were uncooperative in providing you with the information recommended in these pages. This will help us to better assist and inform other parents and students embarking on the college search.

Since 1953, ISI has served millions of people involved in education through a variety of conferences, lectures, publications, and graduate fellowships. These resources are free and includes a subscription to the Intercollegiate Review. Join over 50,000 students and educators who already benefit from ISI membership by visiting our membership page.