Volume 42, Number 8 · May 11, 1995
Who Should Go to College?
By Andrew Hacker
City on a Hill: Testing the American Dream at City College
by James Traub
Addison-Wesley/a William Patrick book, 371 pp., $25.00
In the history of American higher education, the City College of New York had a distinctive place. Excellence came easily to independent universities like Johns Hopkins and Stanford, which were well endowed from the start. Land-grant institutions drew support from their states' middle classes, enabling Ann Arbor and Chapel Hill to become prominent centers of graduate study and research. City College had no such clientele. For over a century it charged no tuition, offering education to students who otherwise could not have gone to college, and these students were able to meet high national standards. Harvard Law School saw the promise in a callow City College undergraduate named Felix Frankfurter. The school's alumni included a generation of first-rate scholars, including eight Nobel Laureates.
Review, 4401 words
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