Charlie Eaton. Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2022. 203p. Hardcover, $23.30 (ISBN: 978-0-226-72042-5).

Abstract

Charlie Eaton has written a book exploring a topic many of us are aware of and probably appalled by—the insidious relationship between high finance and higher education. What Eaton has done, however, is put names to the connections and provided plenty of data to back up his assertions in Bankers in the Ivory Tower. This is a text that anyone connected to academia, including librarians, alumni, and the unfortunate group of debt-ridden nongraduates, can benefit from. In this well-documented book, where the data never becomes too intrusive, Eaton shines a light on people in high finance (private equity bankers and hedge fund investors) both emerging from and then influencing the Ivies and most selective universities. Their influence also extends to the for-profit university system (referred to as “the bottom”) and what Eaton calls “the middle” or the less-selective public universities. While the author’s conclusions are not as far-reaching as the situation demands, he makes an argument for collective action to combat widening socioeconomic inequality that disproportionately harms Black and brown folks.