old-dude This movie was on CNN tonight and it was a heck of a lot more informative than another two hours on CNN of what "might happen" to Bill Cosby's career. Or "when" the grand jury MIGHT decide in Ferguson. This movie to me was very informative and passionate too. The subject of rising college tuitions and what to do about it is very tough. And good points were brought out pro and con. The sad part is a normal kid like myself back in the (gulp) 70s could GO TO COLLEGE if the desire was there. You could work your way through college and even student loans were within reason. It is sad that my generation has failed miserably to afford the same opportunity. Which brings me to the one part of the movie that was blatantly missing. WHY? They skimmed over . . .no ignored completely the burning question of cause. How on earth can tuition for ONE semester go from $200 to $25,000 in less than 30 years?

Nicole of ArchonCinemaReviews.com Ivory Tower is a comprehensive examination into the typically vast cost and perceived benefit from higher education in America and directed by Andrew Rossi.As a good or service, higher education in the form of undergraduate studies' cost has grown significantly faster than inflation or any other comparable product. Filmmaker and documentarian Andrew Rossi analyzes the value added by a baccalaureate degree and the associated knowledge and experience gained through various individual case studies in Ivory Tower.With one of the highest sticker prices of any country to attend college, American tuition has skyrocketed exponentially and significantly quicker than any other good. This is a fact and the tuition of the aughts is no longer remotely comparable to the tuition costs of even twenty to thirty years ago.As a potential viewer of the film Ivory Tower, If you have thought that the university education system in the United States is flawed then you should enjoy this feature. As a documentary, Ivory Tower is extremely informative and covers the American upper education sector extensively. It does so by going into the historical events that significantly affected and resulted in how the American education system ended up in its current state when necessary but does not reflect the brunt of the film.Primarily Andrew Rossi, director and writer of the documentary who gained his education from both Harvard and Yale either ironically or influentially, uses individual experiences and case studies as personal snap shots of the university experience to engage viewers. Of the inclusive archetypes, he touches base on: Harvard/the ivy league experience, Cooper Union/free education, state colleges via out of state students/aka party schools, -only colleges (women's and historically black), hacked education, public schools, community colleges, and Deep Springs College/super-specialty schools.Further Rossi enlists esteemed Presidents and professors from the aforementioned schools and interviews them at length to get their opinions on the benefit versus the cost facing most American parents and prospective students. Further, he speaks with CEOs of companies that offer scholarships to those that drop out of colleges and authors of acclaimed novels that analyze his own hypothesis. The access Rossi gains to the colleges, students, complexes and experts is far-reaching and pretty unparalleled.Ivory Tower is a film that stretches only 90minutes but the wide breadth of information is encyclopedic without being droning, dry or eye-glaze-over worthy. My only two complaints are that his direction is definitely skewed toward college not being worth the cost (overall), especially if it is the 'traditional' undergraduate experience. Additionally, his cinematography was very uninspired given his luck of being present during news-worthy affairs transpired at the schools he was filming and overall the film had a removed History-channel vibe.For more FULL reviews of RECENT releases, please check out our website!

Muhammed_Ottman What Andrew Rossi along with the team behind this great documentary were trying to do is to get along with the full picture of what is really happening, so they make us tick about the whole system of higher education not only in America but also what is reflected of it upon the whole world.And they try to emphasize that there is a problem in all areas of higher education. Including the economical aspects as of all the bombs explode in the American economy, Student loan debt in the nation has reached 1 trillion dollars. The rise in student tuition is unsustainable, yet nearly half of the students are showing no significant gains in learning.And they discuss the idea whether college is worth it or not?"In education there are these powerful social forces, that work where people just imitate what other people are doing without reflecting on why they are doing it. Things like "How do you get into the right college?", "How does your kid get on the right track?", college has been sold and over sold as the key to a better future, And something is going very wrong with it over the last few decades." —Peter Theil, Co-founder PayPalIn "Ivory Tower" they need us to really rethink what are the specific things that people are learning and why are these things valuable? And they want the viewer to thoroughly examine the ingredients of that black-box of higher education.Jumping from the physical class to the virtual one, "Ivory Tower" tries to see if there are comparisons between both and whether or not one system is better than the other, starting from the question; What does college provide?1. Knowledge 2. Network of peers 3. Credential/DiplomaAnd whether or not some or all of these things could be provided by any of the higher education models presented.Discussing MOOCs "Massive open online courses" and whether they are going to transform America's higher education, and going through these professors who took part in the first round of MOOCs, left Stanford to start their own venture capital funded startups (Coursera, Udacity, etc…) and their rival in the east coast edX, which is coming out of MIT and Harvard.The documentary also discusses the retention and pass rates in online courses and why they are lower than face-to-face classes. "Just because you can bring a horse to water but you can't make them drink so by the same talking students have to have discipline, motivation and persistence." — Ellen Junn, Provost, San Jose State UniversityThe documentary tries to ask "How do we put these things together, the face to face and online opportunities and how we can come up with hybrid models" trying to search for solutions that could balance the system and make it future-proof.It's a very informative documentary that I would highly recommend for students, parents and anyone one with concerns about education as well.

jdesando "Opportunity means making college more affordable." Barack ObamaIf you want to know why the cost of higher education has spiraled out of control (over 1000% since the late '70's), then watch the informative but flawed documentary Ivory Tower because director Andrew Rossi doesn't have a clue either. Or rather, he has not yet put together cogent reasons (administrator salaries? faculty salaries? loans for new buildings?) or new solutions—he presents elements of each with no conclusions. The cost just is.Rossi does show the costs are getting higher yet offers no solutions except the ones we already know: Deep Springs College in Death Valley is a free, all-male work-study institution and Spelman College for black women guarantees them a degree. However, the other 4000 institutions in our country are so diverse and complex that none of them is able to avoid the huge cost to students, even with generous financial aid.Because the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates famously dropped out to form their colossal businesses, support organizations like Palo Alto's Thiel Fellowship will pay students the likes of $100K to "uncollege" and become entrepreneurs. All very good, but most of us do not have the genius of those great drop outs, or anywhere near it, to form significant businesses. These are the strategies Rossi offers indirectly as his thesis for the future. Yet, the learning rate of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) is disappointingly low, and sizeable budgets at a variety of campuses have disappointed even progressives with lower than desired graduation levels. The use of online technology promises relief from costs and a wider effect on the population. What Rossi fails to focus in on is the richness of the face to face experience, which to this former university professor and administrator is a major reason to get in debt: Never at any other time in most lives can students meet such diverse people and engage in such heady dialogue to introduce new ways of thinking and expression. In that experience, we come down from our ivory towers to engage the real world. We can't achieve that by staying away: "There are a lot of ideas being floated to get these problems under control: value report cards for universities; pay-it-forward tuition plans; a renewed focus on non-collegiate higher education. For now, however, tuitions continue to rise and students continue to take on back-breaking debt to cover the bills." Bruce Watson