Ivory Tower

The price of college in America has risen 1120% since 1978. In the same time period, prices for health care—the poster industry for excessive costs—have risen by only half that percentage. IVORY TOWER is an unprecedented look at the American higher education system, once thought of worldwide as the model for educating the people, and how it has now become a vehicle for the mass creation of debt. American student loan debt has topped 1.1 trillion dollars (that’s with a “T”), and IVORY TOWER asks if it’s all worth it, especially when you consider that more than one-third of universities, having accrued more and more debt at the hands of competition over the years, are on a path to financial unsustainability. Containing interviews with the very people involved in the push to fix higher education—including those offering alternatives to the current model, those rebelling against the current model, and those looking at options to higher education altogether—IVORY TOWER is a fascinating look at what could possibly be one of our nation’s foremost challenges and one of our biggest remedies: affordable education for all. —T.W.