Poison Ivy

Praise for Poison Ivy: A potent investigation into how elite colleges and universities in the U.S. perpetuate economic inequalities and fail to properly address the country's ongoing racial divide. -Kirkus Reviews This book shines a light on the world of elite Ivy League universities in regard to their avowed support of education for all. . . . Recommended for all library collections on higher education. -Library Journal Evan Mandery's Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us offers the most systematic, highly accessible critique of elite colleges and universities that you are likely to encounter. . . . It's anything but a polemic; the author draws upon the best social science scholarship and his own research to offer an impassioned and devastating critique of the mechanisms, rationales, and concessions that elite private institutions use to justify a system that reproduces the class order. -Inside Higher Ed Mandery argues that the pernicious unevenness of social class at elite colleges is a blueprint for other modes of injustice. Liberal audiences may be startled to see themselves mirrored unflatteringly in these pages, yet readers must not turn away from this book's cruel awakening. A necessary read for parents, academics, college officials, and most of all the students and alumni who benefit from this tilted system. -Alissa Quart, author of Squeezed and executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project A staggering portrait of inequality in America, Poison Ivy offers poignant, lyrically written portraits of student lives on the margins of the American higher education system and a carefully constructed expose of the fundamental myth at its heart. Through conversations with experts, bolstered by data, Mandery shows that the well-recognized inequities at American elite colleges are not the consequences of segregation and disparities of opportunities, but rather the driver of them. -Philip Dray, author of There Is Power in a Union Beautifully written and engaging, Poison Ivy holds elite higher education accountable for exacerbating the gulf between poor and rich, black and white. -Erin I. Kelly, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of Chasing Me to My Grave It's time to wake up and realize that our best ladders of opportunity aren't at colleges with billion-dollar endowments-they're at our publicly funded institutions. -Jack Schneider, co-author of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door