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What Happened to College?
How Politics Broke Higher Education and What We Can Do to Fix It
By Neil Gross
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Table of Contents
About the Book
“The book everyone with a college-age kid should read.” —Katie Couric * “Anyone who wants to understand the crisis in higher education—and help solve it—should read this book.” —Greg Lukianoff, author of The Coddling of the American Mind *
“Everyone has an opinion about higher education, but ironically few scholars actually study it in a systematic way. What Happened to College? brings data and rigorous thinking to bear on the question of how a university system that is in many ways the envy of the world has lost the confidence of such a large share of the country.” —Matthew Yglesias
A sociologist who has been tracking the polarization of higher ed reveals how things went off track, what students are saying, and where we can find hope.
The campus culture wars are raging, but what's really going on behind the headlines? A decade after his landmark book on faculty politics, Neil Gross launched a massive investigation into student life on campus, interviewing over a hundred faculty, students, and administrators across the country and polling thousands more. He looked at liberal arts colleges, state schools, faith-based institutions, and elite universities and combed through studies tracking everything from dating habits and dwindling enrolment in the humanities to the liberal bias embedded in course syllabi.
What he found was startling: Undergraduates today are choosing their schools, their friends, their partners, their activities—even their majors—on the basis of their political beliefs to a degree unimaginable ten years ago, with the goal of interacting as little as possible with anyone whose views don’t line up with their own. Popular campus dating apps invite you to swipe left if you don’t like someone’s political profile—a metaphor for today’s college experience writ large. Instead of resisting this trend, faculty and administrators often encouraged it, creating a cloistered environment where students could avoid uncomfortable disagreement. It isn't so much that the faculty are indoctrinating students—no one likes to be told what to think. Students, if anything, are indoctrinating themselves.
What Happened to College? paints a picture of an educational system in crisis and ripe for change. Grounding his analysis in sorely needed data, deftly debunking overstated claims, Gross offers vivid, fly-on-the-wall insights into what it's like to be a student today at one of our nation's top colleges. While some students will cheat their way to easy As, he he found places where open debate, intellectual inquiry and friendship across political lines still thrive. What are these campus communities doing right and how can prospective students find them? Can we teach students to disagree better? At a time of growing political stridency, nothing could be more important or more necessary.
“Everyone has an opinion about higher education, but ironically few scholars actually study it in a systematic way. What Happened to College? brings data and rigorous thinking to bear on the question of how a university system that is in many ways the envy of the world has lost the confidence of such a large share of the country.” —Matthew Yglesias
A sociologist who has been tracking the polarization of higher ed reveals how things went off track, what students are saying, and where we can find hope.
The campus culture wars are raging, but what's really going on behind the headlines? A decade after his landmark book on faculty politics, Neil Gross launched a massive investigation into student life on campus, interviewing over a hundred faculty, students, and administrators across the country and polling thousands more. He looked at liberal arts colleges, state schools, faith-based institutions, and elite universities and combed through studies tracking everything from dating habits and dwindling enrolment in the humanities to the liberal bias embedded in course syllabi.
What he found was startling: Undergraduates today are choosing their schools, their friends, their partners, their activities—even their majors—on the basis of their political beliefs to a degree unimaginable ten years ago, with the goal of interacting as little as possible with anyone whose views don’t line up with their own. Popular campus dating apps invite you to swipe left if you don’t like someone’s political profile—a metaphor for today’s college experience writ large. Instead of resisting this trend, faculty and administrators often encouraged it, creating a cloistered environment where students could avoid uncomfortable disagreement. It isn't so much that the faculty are indoctrinating students—no one likes to be told what to think. Students, if anything, are indoctrinating themselves.
What Happened to College? paints a picture of an educational system in crisis and ripe for change. Grounding his analysis in sorely needed data, deftly debunking overstated claims, Gross offers vivid, fly-on-the-wall insights into what it's like to be a student today at one of our nation's top colleges. While some students will cheat their way to easy As, he he found places where open debate, intellectual inquiry and friendship across political lines still thrive. What are these campus communities doing right and how can prospective students find them? Can we teach students to disagree better? At a time of growing political stridency, nothing could be more important or more necessary.
About the Author
Jessica Berger Gross
A sociologist known for his data-driven explorations of campus politics and American life, Neil Gross is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology at Colby College. He is the author of Why are Professors Liberal and Why do Conservatives Care? which was based on the most comprehensive study of faculty politics since the 1960s. He has taught at Harvard, Princeton, Williams, and the University of Southern California and written for The Atlantic and The New York Times.
Product Details
- Publisher: Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster (August 25, 2026)
- Length: 288 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668200445
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Raves and Reviews
“Everyone has an opinion about higher education, but ironically few scholars actually study it in a systematic way. Neil Gross's What Happened to College? brings data and rigorous thinking to bear on the question of how a university system that is in many ways the envy of the world has lost the confidence of such a large share of the country. Anyone who cares about the future of our most important and influential institutions should read this book to understand what's actually happening.”
—Matthew Yglesias, cofounder of Vox and author of the Substack Slow Boring
“This is one of the most important books yet on the political transformation of American higher education. What Happened to College? is not just about classrooms, professors, or campus speech controversies. It shows how politics has become part of the entire ecosystem of modern college life—shaping admissions, friendships, dating, social life, majors, and the way students learn to speak or stay silent. Anyone who wants to understand the crisis in higher education—and help solve it—should read this book.”
—Greg Lukianoff, co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind
“If you want to understand how political polarization is transforming higher education in America, this book should be at the top of your list. What Happened to College? does a brilliant job of distinguishing fact from fiction. It also puts student voices at the heart of the story. An essential read for anyone who cares about the future of higher ed.”
—Julia Adams, Margaret H. Marshall Professor of Sociology and cochair of the Committee on Trust in Higher Education, Yale University
“Neil Gross has written the best account of the many ways that campus politics produce cynics and bullies, not inquisitive citizens. If you want to know how we got here—and how we can find our way out—you will have to read his indispensable book.”
—Jonathan Zimmerman, Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor of History of Education, University of Pennsylvania and author of The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America
“Gross is one of the sector’s foremost explainers of its own maladies. More empirical and observational than polemical, he made a splash with his 2013 book, Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? … The emphasis here is on student life, particularly at highly selective colleges and universities. Buttressed by fresh interview and survey data, Gross shows how politics, to an unprecedented degree, has become “a central organizing principle of the undergraduate experience.” If the ideological skew of the professoriate is a problem—and Gross believes it is—what should be done about it? Has activism supplanted scholarship as the primary purpose of certain fields, including sociology?”
—Evan Goldstein and Len Gutkin, Chronicle of Higher Education
“Gross sketches the ways political polarization has reshaped the American college experience….The picture that emerges is one in which students are increasingly avoidant of those who differ with them politically….The danger is that in the absence of meaningful social contact, we are left with reductive stereotypes. And Gross argues that when we see the other side not just as misguided but as evil, the specter of violence is nearby.”
—Christianity Today
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