The Enigmatic Academy

"[T]he cases are insightful and comprehensive ethnographies that offhandedly integrate aspects of academics - student life and student support, marketing, recruitment, retention, community relations and government policies - they are engaging and thought-provoking from many enrollment management/student services perspectives... [The authors'] observations are intense and insightful." Strategic Enrollment Management Source "Their research method is ethnographic case studies of three kinds of schools (for which the book is organized into three parts)... Each part ends with a conclusion that is a superb summary of the previous analysis, and the summaries will make the blood of readers concerned with social justice boil... Summing Up: Recommended."--Choice, February 2013

Christian J. Churchill is Professor of Sociology at St. Thomas Aquinas College, author of numerous articles in sociology, and a licensed psychoanalyst in private practice in Manhattan. Gerald E. Levy is a sociologist and author of Ghetto School: Class Warfare in an Elementary School. He taught at the college level for forty years and is now retired.

Class, Bureaucracy, and Religion in American Education; CONTENTS; INTRODUCTION; PART I. PLUFORT COLLEGE; Introduction; The Regional Atmosphere; The Developmental Thrust; The Symbiotic Community; The Academic Trajectory; The Socio-Political Whirlpool; The Socially Ironic Reality Screen; The Public Relations Panorama; The Competitive Strain; Conclusion: The Bureaucratic Grip; PART II. MOUNTAINVIEW SCHOOL; Introduction; The Brahmin Tone; The Civil Service Intrusion; The Embattled Entitlement Path; The Clubbable Induction; The Currency of Behavior; The Leisured Deviance Realm; Conclusion: Rentier Incorrigibility in Academe;; PART III. LANDOVER JOB CORPS CENTER; Introduction; History: Profit Motives, Local Fears, Violent Outbreaks; Approaching Landover; The River to the Job; Responses to Institutionalized Failure; Students: "It's a risky place."; Conclusion: The Veil of Ennui; CONCLUSION; ENDNOTES; BIBLIOGRAPHY.