Poison Ivy

A lack of effective advising compounds the ill effects of the laissez-faire curriculum, in Lewis's view. Plenty of Harvard students have been gunning for the elite business-consulting firm McKinsey & Co. or Harvard Med since the ninth grade, and a few complete the journey contentedly. Yet others wake up their sophomore year realizing they've been achieving in a vacuum -- they don't want what they thought they wanted. They're lost, and, Lewis argues, Harvard professors possess neither the know-how nor the inclination to help them.

A necessary first step toward reform, Lewis thinks, would be hiring professors on the basis of empathy for young people and personal probity, not research prowess alone. As he notes, you can lose a Harvard professorship for "stealing your colleague's ideas . . . but not stealing postage or abusing your children."

But Lewis never explains how, if he were Harvard's hiring czar, he would balance research, teaching and mentoring skills. The question is trickier than he admits. He wants Harvard to be both a cozy liberal arts college and a research powerhouse. Is that possible? I, for one, might vote to grant tenure to Einstein at Harvard even if he had sticky fingers.

It's fun to argue with the ex-dean, whose knowledge of the subject vastly outstrips that of most commentators on higher education. Unfortunately, as the book progresses it starts to seem less and less a comprehensive critique than a collection of one man's cranky observations. Lewis's discussion of student "professionalism" is confused, for example: He hates it when his liberal arts colleagues sneer at students who seem mainly interested in landing high-paying jobs. (After all, he says, if you're the "best," there's nothing wrong with wanting the "best" jobs, too.) Yet Lewis himself writes, "Something is wrong with our educational system when so many graduating Harvard seniors see consulting and investment banking as their best options for productive lives."

And "unconvincing" does not begin to capture Lewis's chapter on grade inflation. He's all for it! It's no problem if most Harvard students get A's and A-minuses, he writes, because, after all, "grades have been going up for as long as there have been grades." Spot the logical error in that argument -- that would be a good question for a Harvard interview.

A "gentleman's C" used to signal that a student spent his time playing pool at his club or editing the campus newspaper. There was no shame in it and no pretense of distinction either. But a gentleman's (gentleperson's) A-minus? That seems pretty much like a fraud -- on students and graduate schools alike. ?

Christopher Shea, based in Hyattsville, Md., writes a column on intellectual life for the Boston Globe's Ideas section.