The works discussed below are currently the best books on higher education.

In Two Cheers For Higher Education: Why American Universities Are Stronger Than Ever-And How to Meet The Challenges They Face author Steven Brint provides a positive and unbiased critique of American research universities.

The Great Pretender is an exposé of David Rosenhan’s once lauded 1973 work on mental healthcare Staying Sane in Insane Places . Author Susannah Cahalan shines a light on the flawed research and lies that went into Rosenhan’s book.

Author Herb Childress discusses how the overuse of part-time adjunct professors is diluting the quality of post-secondary education in the United States in his work The Adjunct Underclass: How American Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, And Their Mission. An adjunct professor himself Childress reveals how using part-time professors save schools money and cost students a quality education.

The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, And a Legendary Basketball Team by Matthew Goodman discusses how the 1949-50 championship basketball season brought disgrace upon City College of New York. Members of the City College basketball team, the Beavers, colluded with gamblers to alter final scores.

David Kirp is a professor at UC-Berkley. His book The College Dropout Scandal broaches the little-discussed topic of low college completion rates. In the book, Kirp offers practical methods for increasing the number of college graduates.

Ann Gardiner Perkins interviewed 575 women who were among Yale’s first female students to research Yale Needs Women: How The First Group of Girls Rewrote The Rules of an Ivy League Giant. The first women to attend Yale faced a pervasive men only mentality that subjected the co-eds to outright discrimination.

The premise of Anthony Kronman’s The Assault on American Excellence is that schools’ desire to be more inclusive undermines the quality of education. Kronman argues for a return to the standards of excellence that once had to be met to earn a college degree.

Thomas Jefferson’s Education by Alan Taylor is about the role Jefferson and slavery played in the founding of the University of Virginia. Jefferson believed that educating farmer’s sons would strengthen Virginia’s economy ultimately leading to abolition.