Previously published as part of HIGHER EDUCATION?

A quarter of a million dollars. It's the going tab for four years at most top-tier colleges. But is it worth it?

In this provocative work, the renowned sociologist Andrew Hacker and New York Times writer Claudia Dreifus make an incisive case that American college athletics—which originally came into the campus as an innocent form of recreation—have overtaken academic pursuits, compromised the moral authority of educators, and gobbled up resources that should have gone to their basic missions. In other words, that the American way of higher education—now a $420 billion-per-year business—has lost sight of its primary mission: the education of our young people.