Ivory Tower

When I was a high school teacher, one of the more controversial things I did was to encourage my students NOT to go to college like so many of their peers. Instead, I encouraged them to work or go to trade school. Why? Because college, for most young people, is not a great investment any more. You often don't get more out of college than life without it...particularly in regard to prospective job earnings and college. For example, if a student takes on $100,000-200,000 in debt, they might never be able to pay it off...whereas a student learning welding or plumbing or accounting might live a very happy life with little, if any, debt. And, many kids who could barely complete high school were being pushed straight into college...and they almost always failed. Needless to say, many parents weren't happy with me telling their kids that there were alternatives to college. When I and other parents were undergraduates, college was affordable...you could work summers to pay for upcoming two semesters. However, today this simply isn't possible for most kids...and this film dares to say it.

"Ivory Tower" is a very good documentary. It shows many different sides and allows the people to talk. A few seemed completely off-base, such as those who insanely think the system is not broken or those who demand free university education...as someone must pay for it. But many didn't seem weird and offered alternatives...such as non-traditional colleges and the students in the commune, of sorts, in San Francisco where prospective students don't do college but live together and teach each other how to be entrepreneurs. I liked these alternative voices and think the film would be fantastic for teens and their parents to watch together. After all, they'll soon have to make a decision...one which can be very costly./

"Ivory Tower" is an informative documentary of how higher education has been robbing students and their parents with the rising cost of tuition and fees over the years. This documentary is going to show how colleges are leaving students with debt they can barely afford for an education that might not land them the perfect high paying job they wanted as well. It's amazing how some of these big colleges are becoming more like resorts than places of education and that's some of the extra things the students are paying for. What makes this worse is the fact the students will be more interested in socializing and partying than getting the education they're blowing their parents money on. They're actually paying for things that really have nothing to do with a good education. After seeing this film you'll be wondering is it worth it to go to or send your kids to college now. This documentary does have a flaw or two but cinematic perfection isn't really the main point of this film. This film is to let people know what they are going to be dealing with before they enter college themselves or send someone to college.

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!

90 minutes of children whining "SOMEONE ELSE SHOULD PAY FOR MY LIFE". A pathetic, disjointed, chaotic mess. An 8th grader with an iPhone could make a better movie. Watching students stage a sit-in because the college threatens to make them pay tuition for the first time (EGAD THE HORROR) is the essence of first-world infantilized narcissism. There is no narrative to the film, no beginning-middle-end. It's as if the director passed around a camera and asked everybody to "talk about education stuff for 5 minutes". At best, it's a (horrible) campaign commercial for Elizabeth Warren, as is the website. There is no 'there' there. A convoluted and inept political hack job. Save your $15.

Like a lot of kids graduating from high school I was "brainwashed" into thinking a college education was the end all or be all to success. I ultimately found the education I received was severely lacking in giving students the necessary tools and skills needed to survive in the real world.

While this documentary wasn't perfect it did point out the absurd amount of debt kids unfortunately have to take on to graduate. In my opinion the whole college program needs to be seriously overhauled.

As I said I didn't find this documentary perfect but at least it brought some of this stuff to light