Review: The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us

The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us by Paul Tough
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tough talks about the varying value of attending different colleges, how tuition and scholarships work, and compares college and trade schools for career outcomes. I found a few topics of great interest. First, Tough debunks the excessive valuation of trade degrees, using a detailed story of a welder who does not earn anywhere near the salaries bandied about by politicians. While there may be examples of plumbers, electricians, or welders getting lawyer-like rates, Tough implies that is quite a rare outcome. The second topic I appreciated was the effort colleges go through to price their tuition and fees, as well as discounts/scholarships offered to students, while optimizing enrollment, expense coverage, graduation rates, and other criteria while also attempting to build a student body culture and meet other goals. This sounded much more complex than airline seat price optimization. I live near a small college and have noticed many different tactics they have attempted to modify their mix of students and optimize their revenues. Tough’s description shows that I don’t know the half of it. The third thing that I found interesting was Tough’s description of lacrosse as a key sport to ensure students are accepted at schools like the Ivy’s. According to Tough, lacrosse is an expensive sport to compete in, which provides some indication to schools that the student will succeed, and pay. Being a former high school band parent, we always heard similar stories about playing the expensive French Horn. The French Horn is the lacrosse of the musical class.

I enjoy the way Tough approached the topics he writes about in this volume. He describes the topic and why it is of interest. He provides the pertinent statistics and expert interviews. For most topics, he also provides the story of an individual, one who has been impacted by the topic. These stories were the most memorable parts of the book. Glad I read this one, and will look for more by Tough.


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