Daniel Golden

It's a bit dry at times, but it really does expose just one more privilege that upper class, famous, well-connected white people have. My favorite part of the book is the chapter about Caltech, Cooper Union and Berea colleges. They are all 100% merit based and turn a totally blind eye to all other factors, and how they still get donations and they don't struggle financially whatsoever.

The book is good, it's actually made me feel almost guilty at being a legacy myself. Although I didn't go to show more an elite school by any stretch of the imagination, and I am more than certain I would have gotten into my alma mater regardless (I was in the top 15% of my HS class and got great scores on the SAT and ACT), but, still, I wonder about the blank on the application form where I wrote in my dad's name and class year.

Thinking about all of the privileges that the upper class is privy to makes my blood boil as well, especially the few times I made the mistake of reading the Weekend section of the Wall Street Journal. show less

Daniel Golden’s The Price of Admission is a powerful, well-researched exposé that pulls back the curtain on how wealth, legacy, and privilege influence who gets into America’s most prestigious universities—and who doesn’t. This updated edition expands on his original findings with new cases and further analysis, making the book even more relevant in the wake of high-profile admissions scandals like Varsity Blues.

Golden, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, documents in clear and show more often shocking detail how elite colleges reserve doors for the children of donors, celebrities, politicians, and alumni, creating a separate—and highly privileged—track for the wealthy. The book lays bare how these advantages are often unofficial but institutionalized, undermining the idea of meritocracy in higher education.

What makes the book especially compelling is its human element: Golden profiles both those who benefit from backdoor admissions and the talented, deserving students—often from underrepresented or low-income backgrounds—who are pushed aside. His reporting is both fact-driven and empathetic, illustrating how inequality is baked into the admissions system at the very institutions that claim to be engines of upward mobility.

Golden also explores:
• The role of legacy admissions and development (donor influence)
• How standardized testing and athletic recruitment are gamed
• The impact on racial, socioeconomic, and geographic diversity
• The silence and complicity of universities in maintaining this imbalance show less

The openness of American colleges and universities for thought and research is seen by academics as the keystone to higher education. However Daniel Golden writes in Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America’s Universities this is seen as opportunities to recruit agents and cultivate operatives as well steal technological innovations both by our own intelligence agencies and those across the globe.

Golden divided his book into foreign and domestic show more intelligence agencies exploitation of American universities. The first focused how foreign agencies, mainly the Chinese, have been exploiting American universities need of prestige and tuition money to gain partnerships between Chinese universities and their American counterparts resulting in an exchange of students and professors. Yet the most important focus of Golden’s investigation was on how the openness and collaboration within American university labs opens up opportunities for individuals to funnel research, including those paid by the U.S. government and American companies, to their home country to be exploit by their own government or to patient and start up a business. The second half was on the complicated relationship between American intelligence agencies and universities, some of who encourage a relationship and those that do not. The aspect of conflict between secrecy and openness is seen throughout the latter half of the book with 9/11 playing a pivotal role in each side’s views. Unlike the first half of the book, this section is seen over the course of 60 years compared to more near 2000 but in a way to show that past is prologue.

As an investigative journalist, Golden uses extensive research and a multitude of interviews in giving a full history and the scale of a front in the global spy game that many in the United States haven’t been aware of. Unfortunately for Golden the timing of this book while on the one hand current and on the other potentially dated. Nearly all his interviews take place no later than 2015, but since the election of Donald Trump with a seemingly nativist groundswell behind him and student demonstrations against conservative speakers might have begun a fundamental shift that could drastically change how both American and foreign intelligence services are seen on American universities especially as a post-9/11 “tolerance” on campus changes to hostility.

Even though the subject Daniel Golden has written about could be in the midst of a sudden sea change, Spy Schools is still a book to read in at least to understand an important part of the global spy game. Although no up-to-date, the recent and long-term history is significant for anyone who is concerned about national security and foreign intervention in American affairs. show less

I guess I am naive in my view of politics, but I thought spies went away with the Cold War. Not that much thought has gone to it, but I thought most governmental interaction and progress came from people sitting around a long table or negotiating peace after an "incident." This book has definitely opened my eyes. Not only do spies and human assets used for intelligence gathering still exist, they are being recruited, groomed or even installed as undergraduates, graduate students and even show more professors. And the motivations are so wide ranging! Always assumed it was a sense of patriotism or sense of adventure that would cause people to choose this lifestyle, and for some it is, but for others it's just money, or medical care for family members, or freedom from oppressive governments or, and this one surprised me most(although thinking of really bright and successful business people it shouldn't have) ego.

At any rate, definitely worth checking out. I'd loan you my copy, but I already have multiple requests to borrow it. show less