Paul Tough’s important new book on the broken promises of higher education begins with a chapter that he succeeds in making as suspenseful as the prologue of any serial-killer novel and as heart-rending as the climax of an epic romance. It describes a high school senior who is waiting to hear if she has been accepted at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.
Her name is Shannen. She’s from a poor family in the Bronx. She has worried so much and worked so hard that she’s underweight and permanently exhausted. And she believes — based on all the conversations around her, all the cultural cues — that her entire future hinges on the answers from these institutions.