Reader responses to my Charlotte Simmons review are all over the lot, from

“Wolfe doesn’t tell the half of it” to “nothing like that going on at MY

college.” Seems to me there is wide variation between colleges, even

between high-Ivies.

But why go to college at all, to credential-up for some job that will be

outsourced to Bangladesh the year after you graduate?

“Mr. Derbyshire—Things are as bad as Wolfe portrays them. Following an

excellent education in a private Jesuit high school in [major city] I

attended and graduated from [major university]. Neither of my children will

ever go near such a place. My wife (a very bright and completely decent

Englishwoman) did not attend university. My neighbors (in a nice suburb of

[major city]) who have the largest houses are a plumber and a builder who

have managed to start and run successful enterprises without the benefit of

a college education.

“College is an expensive hiatus during which young men and women experience

depravity, drunkenness and depression out of sight of their

parents — who benefit from not seeing the suicides, abortions, rapes and

baseness.”