In this volume the author lays out the facts on the current state of American Education. Sinclair writes in the introduction: What is the so-called higher education of these United States? You have taken it, for the most part, on faith. It is something which has come to be; it is big and impressive, and you are impressed. Every year you pay a hundred million dollars of public funds to help maintain it, and half that amount in tuition fees for your sons and daughters. You take it for granted that this money is honestly and wisely used; that the students are getting the best, the highest education the money can buy. Suppose I were to tell you that this educational machine has been stolen? That a bandit crew have got hold of it and have set it to work, not for your benefit, nor the benefit of your sons and daughters, but for ends very far from these? That our six hundred thousand young people are being taught, deliberately and of set purpose, not wisdom but folly, not justice but greed, not freedom but slavery, not love but hate?