Policy

Reason.tv: Crazy U's Andrew Ferguson on How to Get Your Kid into College w/o Going Insane

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Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and the author of, most recently, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College.

Drawing rave reviews from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Crazy U is a very funny yet very serious look at the higher-education industry, especially the status anxiety college invokes in parents. Ferguson roams the countryside with his diffident son, touring various campuses and meeting characters such as a sharp-tongued counselor who charges $40,000 to shepherd high schoolers through an increasingly competitive and byzantine admissions process.

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Ferguson and his son Gillam, who is now a sophomore at the University of Virginia (discussed as "Big State University" in the book). Shot by Jim Epstein and edited by Josh Swain.

Approximately 5 minutes. Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to our YouTube channel for automatic notifications when new material goes live.

Ferguson is also the author of Land of Lincoln and Fools' Names, Fools' Faces. For more on those books and the author, go here now.

In 2008, Gillespie interviewed Ferguson as part of an experimental interactive media studies class taught via videocam for Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Watch the discussion with Ferguson, Gillespie, and the students of IMS 390B by going here. Among the topics covered: Land of Lincoln, Ferguson's dislike of Twitter, and his years as a speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush. About 50 minutes.

3/11/2011 Update: Ferguson's book is temporarily sold out at Amazon. To purchase at Barnes & Noble, go here.