Preview reading of the first two chapters from my new novel, Hire Lernin': An Idealist’s Quest Through the Realm of for-Profit Education

My first novel involves the bittersweet journey of a young, idealistic, naïve attorney who takes on the role of academic dean at a for-profit business school in New York City in the late 1980s knowing very little about the industry. Unable to accept the way things are, he immediately launches into a personal quest to change lives for the better in an environment where only the bottom-line matters. Hard work and an entrepreneurial spirit quickly propel him to professional success, but at a deep personal cost in the process as he learns critical life-altering lessons about himself, about leadership, about for-profit and not-for-profit higher education, and about love. The novel is fiction based on my own experiences as academic dean of a for-profit business school as a newly minted lawyer in circumstances quite similar to those of the protagonist and in a similar frame of a bit more than a year. 

The novel offers a rare peek behind the curtain of the for-profit education industry that only a former insider could write. Beyond the drama, tension, humor and conflicting love stories of the narrative, the novel raises some very real, compelling and little discussed issues about the failings of both for-profit and traditional non-profit public and private institutions in meeting the needs of students who need meaningful job training or retraining in a reasonably short time to provide meaningful work and a living wage for themselves and their families. For economic and political reasons, public institutions such as community colleges and schools of technology have largely abandoned what was once a primary mission of providing workers with meaningful skills in the trades and office support positions for business and industry and have largely become feeder schools for baccalaureate programs that often do not provide the skills employers need. It is very expensive to provide the labs and equipment needed to train students as mechanics, machinists, plumbers, electricians, welders, and a host of other blue collar professions that provide good jobs, high pay and the opportunity for individuals to build their own businesses. Educating students in the liberal arts, humanities and the social sciences, on the other hand, generally requires minimal resources and no costly labs by comparison. Liberal arts degrees can also lead to rewarding careers, though usually only after many years of study. And in the professions, graduate degrees are likely to be a requirement for employment and/or advancement. 

I was one of the fortunate students who could have studied any career of choice with no concern about having to feed a family or keep a roof over my head thanks to very supportive parents. But I know were that not the case that my training at Brooklyn Technical High School that besides college-level coursework in the liberal arts, math and sciences provided me with significant tools in electronics, electricity and mechanics that would have made me highly employable in any of these fields out of High School at two or three times the starting salary I could have commanded with my B.A. in Queen's College's English Honors Program with high honors designation four years later. My dad as a world-class machinist/mechanic earned more than twice my salary when he retired, though I was a tenured professor in the SUNY system at the time. 

In the past two decades, certain segments of public and private non-profit education and for-profit education have come to mirror one another in their common failings--something that is touched upon in this novel but I will fully explore in a planned sequel that will also be fiction based on my experience as both a professor and administrator in non-profit public and private institutions.

Hire Lernin' is now available in hardcover, paperback and eBook versions at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other booksellers. 

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