Thursday, March 10, 2011

Crazy U’s Andrew Ferguson on How to Get Your Kid Into College W/O Going Nuts!



Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and the author of, most recently, Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College.

Drawing rave reviews from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Crazy U is a very funny yet very serious look at the higher-education industry, especially the status anxiety college invokes in parents. Ferguson roams the countryside with his diffident son, touring various campuses and meeting characters such as a sharp-tongued counselor who charges $40,000 to shepherd high schoolers through an increasingly competitive and byzantine admissions process.

Reason’s Nick Gillespie sat down with Ferguson and his son Gillam, who is now a sophomore at the University of Virginia (discussed as “Big State University” in the book and also the Grouch's alma mater). 

Ferguson is also the author of Land of Lincoln and Fools’ Names, Fools’ Faces. For more on those books and the author, go here now.

1 comment:

  1. I enjoyed the video, and I'm sure I've read some things from Ferguson before. I agree with him that most colleges charge a lot and fail to prepare students for the job market. Unless you get a big scholarship, the return on investment only makes sense at the high end, where you network with connected Ivy League peers, or at the low end, where you go to a cheap state college or technical school and get a sharply targeted degree.

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