A Book Club for Chronicle Readers

Academe is changing rapidly. State support for public higher education is everywhere in doubt. Colleges and universities are raising tuition and shuttering programs. Tenured positions are more precious than ever.

Not surprisingly, higher education is increasingly a fertile subject for authors, who in new books are weighing in on how to solve its problems, redefine its purpose, measure its progress, and keep its promise to future generations. We’d like to know what you think of this profusion of higher-education books, and we invite you to explore them in depth by joining our new book club.

How Will It Work?

Members of the club will read one book each month, divided into weekly sections. We’ll discuss each section and invite the book’s author to answer your questions in a live-streamed chat at the end of the month.

This is our working plan, but it is open to change.

What Will We Read?

Ultimately, you will decide the books we read. Leave your nominations for our first book in the comments section of this article. For context, here are a few books that we think might be appropriate:

• Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream, by Suzanne Mettler
• Saving State U: Fixing Public Higher Education, by Nancy Folbre
• College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, by Andrew Delbanco
• What Is College For? The Public Purpose of Higher Education, edited by Ellen Condliffe Lagemann and Harry Lewis

Here’s a Timeline for Our First Book

Today: Book nominations begin.
March 21: Voting begins on the finalists.
March 24: The first book is announced.
April 1: We begin reading!

What Do You Think?

Would you be willing to participate? What book would you like to read first? Would you prefer to discuss the book in the website’s comments or on Twitter? Leave your thoughts and book nominations in the comments section below.