Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

2fresh 2clean "Ivory Tower" is an informative documentary of how higher education has been robbing students and their parents with the rising cost of tuition and fees over the years. This documentary is going to show how colleges are leaving students with debt they can barely afford for an education that might not land them the perfect high paying job they wanted as well. It's amazing how some of these big colleges are becoming more like resorts than places of education and that's some of the extra things the students are paying for. What makes this worse is the fact the students will be more interested in socializing and partying than getting the education they're blowing their parents money on. They're actually paying for things that really have nothing to do with a good education. After seeing this film you'll be wondering is it worth it to go to or send your kids to college now. This documentary does have a flaw or two but cinematic perfection isn't really the main point of this film. This film is to let people know what they are going to be dealing with before they enter college themselves or send someone to college.

jdeureka "Ivory Tower" is very good and the best thing that I know of to date on this subject.But. It is the tip of a Mount Everest of an iceberg. It is by no means exhaustive.For example, "Ivory Tower" does not consider the alternative models of higher education that work elsewhere. This is an abysmal crack in the middle of this otherwise A+ contemporary piece of documentary investigative journalism.For starters, why not consider the viable alternative models of higher education -- their traditions & place within their own indigenous cultures -- in Europe? And what the USA can learn from them? Europe is, after all, the taproot of US higher education. For at least a decade now there's been a wave of young Americans who come to Europe for affordable, excellent higher education. Reverse immigration -- is this not tragic? Why the myopia in "Ivory Tower" which suggests this crisis is only a US problem or only has a US solution? On one level this documentary is like the "World Series" in US baseball --which pretty much excludes the rest of the world.That said, this is otherwise an excellent news piece about a deeply troubled, divided time in US Higher Education. There's almost a percolating Civil War. For "Ivory Tower" is also about the larger crisis in US social mobility. Plus suggests an institutional crisis in teachers' failure to deal with this problem in conjunction with their students -- since they together are the front line soldiers in this struggle.The film's frustration is satisfying. It honestly exposes a problem that will not go away because of solutions proposed by the US government (local or national) or by the utopianism of digital technology.The solution is somehow with The People -- as the Cooper Union segment ironically shows. Yet The People are oddly passive. Why? "Ivory Tower" is right. The USA's higher education system is either being deeply restructured to favor an economic elite or America is witnessing the destruction of the older, GI-Bill, democratic model of the dynamic engine of college education & social mobility.Yet in "Ivory Tower" are the key fissures even identified? This is more of a cry, a frantic waving for help. And you can't tell if the troubled figure is waving or drowning.What & where are the tools needed to fix US higher education? And "education" meaning what? Do Americans themselves fundamentally believe in intellectual education or practical training? Why is there such a profound lack of agreed-upon national levels for skills and knowledge? Why in effect are so many "nonprofit" universities dysfunctional, profit-making corporations? Why the blood-sucking banks living off of student loans and ex-students' careers ruined, stifled, threatened because of the student loan Sword of Damocles? Does this problem exist because, at heart, the USA is deeply anti-intellectual? Because other values rate higher? Like success or money or privilege and pleasure? What now? Thank you.

jdesando "Opportunity means making college more affordable." Barack ObamaIf you want to know why the cost of higher education has spiraled out of control (over 1000% since the late '70's), then watch the informative but flawed documentary Ivory Tower because director Andrew Rossi doesn't have a clue either. Or rather, he has not yet put together cogent reasons (administrator salaries? faculty salaries? loans for new buildings?) or new solutions—he presents elements of each with no conclusions. The cost just is.Rossi does show the costs are getting higher yet offers no solutions except the ones we already know: Deep Springs College in Death Valley is a free, all-male work-study institution and Spelman College for black women guarantees them a degree. However, the other 4000 institutions in our country are so diverse and complex that none of them is able to avoid the huge cost to students, even with generous financial aid.Because the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates famously dropped out to form their colossal businesses, support organizations like Palo Alto's Thiel Fellowship will pay students the likes of $100K to "uncollege" and become entrepreneurs. All very good, but most of us do not have the genius of those great drop outs, or anywhere near it, to form significant businesses. These are the strategies Rossi offers indirectly as his thesis for the future. Yet, the learning rate of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) is disappointingly low, and sizeable budgets at a variety of campuses have disappointed even progressives with lower than desired graduation levels. The use of online technology promises relief from costs and a wider effect on the population. What Rossi fails to focus in on is the richness of the face to face experience, which to this former university professor and administrator is a major reason to get in debt: Never at any other time in most lives can students meet such diverse people and engage in such heady dialogue to introduce new ways of thinking and expression. In that experience, we come down from our ivory towers to engage the real world. We can't achieve that by staying away: "There are a lot of ideas being floated to get these problems under control: value report cards for universities; pay-it-forward tuition plans; a renewed focus on non-collegiate higher education. For now, however, tuitions continue to rise and students continue to take on back-breaking debt to cover the bills." Bruce Watson

jack_gott 90 minutes of children whining "SOMEONE ELSE SHOULD PAY FOR MY LIFE". A pathetic, disjointed, chaotic mess. An 8th grader with an iPhone could make a better movie. Watching students stage a sit-in because the college threatens to make them pay tuition for the first time (EGAD THE HORROR) is the essence of first-world infantilized narcissism. There is no narrative to the film, no beginning-middle-end. It's as if the director passed around a camera and asked everybody to "talk about education stuff for 5 minutes". At best, it's a (horrible) campaign commercial for Elizabeth Warren, as is the website. There is no 'there' there. A convoluted and inept political hack job. Save your $15.