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Ivory Tower
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Ethan Stevenson (29th September 2014). |
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The Film
 “College has been sold, and oversold, as the key to a better future, and something has gone very wrong with it over the last few decades.” Growing up in middle class America, you're fed a particular line about the importance of higher education. Perhaps, more accurately, a particular lie about it. Parents, teachers, high school guidance counselors, and even the media drill this message into us. Out of high school, you'll apply directly to a 4 year university; when you graduate with your degree, you'll get a good job, and that’s how you’ll live a good life. But there’s a disconnect between this message, and the truth. 15, 20, 30, or even 50 years ago, there may have been some basis to the mostly fiction of a good school, good job, and good life narrative. Twenty-somethings were graduating college with degrees in-hand, their schooling largely subsidized by government grants, not loans, and the cost of most colleges was affordable enough that what the grant didn't cover, could be made up with a summer job. The degree received, after no more or less than 4 years, would more likely than not land graduates a job paying a decent wage. They would earn enough to maybe put a decent down payment on a house, or outright buy a new car, just a couple years after graduation. They could start a family. Now, for the kids born from perhaps the last generations where that myth held some truth, things have changed. Recent college graduates represent one of the largest unemployed and, more importantly, under-employed portions of the population in modern America. (How’s that unpaid internship working out? Is that Starbucks barista job everything you hoped it would be after 6 years and a measly Bachelor's degree?) Out of school, unable to find jobs worthy of even Master's degrees, graduates are more likely to move back home and live with their parents. A particular subset of an entire generation is putting off having children and getting married; they're foregoing home ownership, and still driving that clunker, a second-hand Toyota Corolla with a cassette deck and busted A/C compressor. Why? Why aren't these graduates living the life their mom and pop told them they would, as long as they worked hard enough through school. Why aren't they like the generations before them? At least in part, it’s all because the current crop of graduates can't afford… really, any alternative. They can't afford the house, the family, the car, because they can’t get a job, or they have too much debt, or both. What is the value of a college education, really, anyway? At what point does the cost-benefit ratio shift balance to the other, unfavorable, side on the proverbial scale? Is college even “worth it” anymore? With tuition costs on the rise, skyrocketing two or even ten-fold, depending on your frame of reference, in an economy where a degree no longer guarantees employment at all, there’s little doubt the scales attached to the higher education system in America are at their tipping point, and questions like these are no longer strict hypotheticals. Student debt has passed an unfathomable and absurd threshold: $1 trillion. Most former students don't have the money to even start paying back their loans. And incoming students are facing bigger obstacles; some of them seem too daunting to even make the jump into higher education. College just doesn't seem like a viable option to an increasing number. And society says not going to college isn't really an option at all. The bubble is about to burst—if it hasn’t already. Director Andrew Rossi’s new documentary “Ivory Tower” is a bold and often quite illuminating piece. He attempts to analyze the state of higher education in modern America; his thesis is that the older model of education, born out of Harvard University in the 1600s, has fallen by the wayside as, across the board, an entire “industry” has shifted more and more toward corporatization. A quest for profits and list-topping prestige amongst the competition has driven universities away from the goal of actually educating their students. Popularism has given rise to a culture where students are viewed as “customers” to please. The fact of the matter is, college is expensive, and if it is indeed a business and industry like any other, then consumers are not getting a product relative to the cost. Tuition has increased nearly 1200 percent since the late 1970's. The cost of higher education has outmatched natural inflation four to one, in a single generation. For some, it’s simply too expensive to get a degree anymore. A few would argue, college is too costly for anyone, for what you get out of it: a piece of paper that’s not really worth the $100,000 in debt the average student amasses by graduation. Rossi’s documentary is sprawling, often epic in scope and at times too unwieldy for the modest 90 minute runtime. Set against the backdrop of hundreds of years of growth and change in American education—hitting upon the foundation of several renowned universities, their towers erected during the Civil War and in the aftermath of Reconstruction; the GI Bill and its affect in the true equalization of high education, as it was finally introduced and made attainable to the masses; Clark Kerr’s creation of the UC system and its interconnected network smaller schools in California; among several pivotal moments in the history of the American collegiate system, including governmental regulation and deregulation that has had a huge impact in more recent times—“Ivory Tower” also offers a cross-section of the types of schools, and other initiatives, offered to students today. “Tower” contrasts old standard Harvard with the more modern Arizona State, an infamous “party school”, where student dorms more closely resemble a resort, with Olympic-sized swimming pools and tanning salons, and the party culture features prominently in campus catalogs. ASU's entire “brand” identity is all part of an effort to drive enrolment from out-of-state students, who pay higher tuition rates than locals, and thus allow the university to turn a higher profit, which they then funnel back into building appealing things like fitness centers, stadiums. The money rarely finds it's way into the actual classroom. The prestigious Spelman College, a university for young black women with a long tradition of community, is compared with Deep Springs, a radical two year program in the heart of California’s hottest desert, Death Valley, catering specially to disenfranchised young (and predominantly white) men. Springs almost resembles a hippyish commune, and certainly not a traditional university. Students are taught in rooms—in the loosest use of the term—by bearded, bed-headed professors that encourage critical thinking about greater philosophical concepts. Outside of a conventional class, students at Springs are still isolated to their small community in the middle of nowhere, and they have to work off the land and with each other to get by. It’s essentially a pacification process, turning angry teens into individuals who become capable contributors to society. On some level, that should be the goal of all education in a nutshell; not just higher education. It's the pre-packaging of people for their later-in-life purpose. Hopefully that purpose is on some higher plane than mere office drone. But as with all things distorted by the faster-and-faster pace of modernity, of assembly-line mass-production, the product put out at the end of the line in the higher education industry is only as good as the individual pieces assembled along the way. Garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes. And when the manufacturers—universities—are seemingly willing to use trashy pieces, and expel a similar waste by handing students a diploma that means little today, it’s no wonder minority opposition, like the start-up “uncollege” movement, based primarily in San Francisco, has gained some momentum. Backed by Peter Thiel of Paypal, the Thiel Fellowship and Hackerhouse are attracting the attention of adolescents and young adults about to enter into the “system”; some are choosing other alternatives to conventional colleges and universities, like Thiel's initiative. The “uncollege” idea stems from the entrepreneurship of tech pioneers—Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, fellow Harvard dropout Bill Gates, Reed College runway Steve Jobs—who all made billions without finishing college; without degrees. Of course, for every Gates or Jobs, or Zuckerberg—who is amusingly show by Rossi to be both an inspiration to those enrolled in a Computer Science course at Harvard University, and seen as a sort of hero among the scions of the unschooled at startups in Silicon Valley—there are countless others who don’t make it. Upon entering the tech world, Rossi turns his attention to campuses like Stanford, a traditional institution that was among the first to see the web as a way to the future. Stanford was among the first major universes in the United States to embrace MOOCs—Massive Open Online Courses—as a new form of free education. The goal is higher level information through truly democratized dissemination, across the Internet, around the globe. It was a nice idea; but what is most interesting with the MOOC is that, although they were created within a welcoming, congenial collegiate environment, these so-called free online course programs have only really thrived outside of the university, backed by venture capitalists. Coursera, Udacity, and edX, all started by professors who then went out and found backers, and privatized. I can’t help but think, one day, these new and currently “free” forums will be plagued by a need for profit returns, and the cycle—prestige, profits, pleasing and treating the student as “customer”—will begin again. And the results are already showing online courses only work when a student is motivated to study independently, without structure, something completely at odds with their primary education on a lower level. “Ivory Tower” is structured around one of the most brilliant examples of this broken, self-perpetuating system: a student protest at Cooper Union. Founded by Peter Cooper during the Guided Age—the first time in human history when higher education was seen as a basic human right—the Union is a small university in the heart of New York City. In 2013, Cooper’s board of trustees voted to charge incoming students a considerable tuition for the first time in the institution’s 150 year history. The result was a 65 day occupation of the President’s office by students already enrolled. The outcome of this student revolt is rather telling; a perfect reflection of the disheartening state of academia and the threat to free, not-for-profit schooling in America. Of course, all is not lost, or at least some of those who Rossi interviews hope. He presents plenty of voices who counter, and argue that the system still serves a purpose, and will continue to do so for many, many years. They see higher education not as broken, but merely in flux. All the options currently in play need to be tested, and what works tied together to create anew. A sort of hybrid. As one of the interviewees comments, “experimentation will produce success and failure, and we need to learn to live with that.” Indeed, at the end of “Ivory Tower”, one question still remains unanswered: is college worth it? There is no clear answer yet. It is early in many of these new experimental alternatives, and they may not work any better than what's currently in place. As imperfect and infuriatingly idiotic as the entire painful college process often seems, there is probably some, if not considerable, value in higher education. But what you learn—what i’ve learned—rarely comes from a lecture in a classroom setting, or merely reading a book. It’s learned in intense debate during the open dialog after lecture, if a professor cares enough to encourage such inviting and lively environment. It’s learned in close collaboration with other students, in and our of class. It’s learned in battling the bureaucratic bullshit, waging through all the muck just to get that stupid little piece of paper that says you made it through a system so strangely structured like few others. It’s worth it, if you can get something out of the experience. For my sake, for the sake of every college student everywhere, I hope that’s really true, and not just another little lie perpetuated by parents, teachers, counsellors, and the media. I hope it continues to be true, if it indeed is. And if not true in the old way, then in some way. A new way. And, perhaps, a better way.
Video
Paramount’s 1080p AVC MPEG-4 encoded high definition transfer has the benefit of surprisingly competent and consistent visuals, direct from a variety of digital sources, including HD cameras, high resolution photographs, computer graphics and animation. Despite the obvious differences in the various types of equipment used to capture the individual segments of the film—seemingly anything with HD-capable resolution, from iPhones and compact DSLR cameras for location work, to professional rigs for interviews—there’s a surprising amount of similarity. Overall clarity is impressive—exceptionally sharp, almost to the point of aliasing with perhaps a little ringing—and color reproduction is excellent, offering solid saturation in the crisp green foliage and well manicured lawns of early term, that give way to absolutely gorgeous autumnal colors in other shots. Intricate brickwork of campus buildings is finely rendered, aerial shots of college stadiums show staggering detail, and interview segments have nicely rendered fabrics and facial close-ups are almost too revealing at times. In general terms, the source material appears free of any egregious sensor noise or other anomalies, a few minor seconds-long exceptions aside. Contrast is stable. Whites are clean, if occasionally overblown. Blacks are deep but shadow well delineated. Of course, with any documentary, there are inconsistencies; archival footage culled from tattered WWII-era film or more modern standard definition videotape, inherit an entirely different, flawed, aesthetic incongruous with the rest of the newly shot material. A majority of the documentary is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, but occasional inserts are pillar-boxed at 1.33:1 with black bars on the sides of the frame. Some webcam and camera phone footage is window-boxed, occasionally into a collage of many different videos on screen at once.
Audio
Like most documentaries, “Ivory Tower’s” English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit) is a slight sonic affair, focused on clear and constantly intelligible dialog from canned interviews and little else. Rossi’s film is driven entirely by the interviews and archival clips, with no overarching narration. Some of the archival material, including a recording of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt discussing the GI Bill, is limited by the antiquated technology of the time, and/or poor preservation, with a noticeable boxiness and hiss. The soundtrack is also supported by composer Ian Hultquist’s score—an odd combination of minimalist piano motifs and occasionally bass-heavy synth (which seems to take more than a few stylistic touches from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ work on “The Social Network” (2010), but I digress.) The disc also includes options for Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 and Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1, and subtitles in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Extras
Digging through “Ivory Tower’s” supplemental package is not exactly a tall order. It's comprised of a Q&A featurette and two deleted scenes. Paramount has also authored the Blu-ray with optional bookmarks. “Q&A on Opening Weekend” (1.78:1, 1080p; 15 minutes 44 seconds) is a featurette with director Andrew Rossi and Cooper Union student/activist Victoria Sobel. The two field questions from the audience after the film’s premiere at the Angelika Film Center in New York City, often clarifying points from the film or giving updates on events and statistics. Two deleted scenes (1.78:1, 1080p; 7 minutes 6 seconds, play all) have also been included: - Clayton Christensen & Andrew Delbanco debate disruption in higher education. - Anthony Carnevale discusses college and social inequality.
Packaging
“Ivory Tower” tumbles onto Blu-ray from Paramount Home Entertainment and CNN Films. The documentary has been pressed onto a region free BD-25. The disc is packaged in an eco-Elite keep case.
Overall
“Ivory Tower” is a fascinating film about the current state of higher education in modern American society. Slickly produced, and made in the thick of it, the documentary is certainly timely; both illuminating and at times infuriating. Director Andrew Rossi’s scope is occasionally too broad, and the picture feels a bit unruly for a compact 90 minutes runtime, but the open-ended and seemingly solution-less denouement fits within the context of a crisis still ongoing. This is very much the starting point to a larger debate that’s too complex for a single film, and what better way to starting that discourse than by seeing this film, preferably with others? Paramount’s Blu-ray offers satisfying video, a notably reserved soundtrack, and just a few extras.
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