The 1,140-page 2010-2011 edition of ISI’s guide to higher education, Choosing the Right College,landed on my desk last week. A couple of American Conservative points of interest: Michael Brendan Dougherty and I have contributed to it in years past, and TAC intern Patrick Ford is a contributing editor in the latest edition. The whole package, which includes a foreword from Walter Williams, is ably overseen by John Zmirak.

Since it comes from ISI, Choosing the Right College is concerned about more than just median SAT scores. It gives a good rundown of where the 130-plus colleges and universities profiled stand on religious instruction (for example, which Catholic schools are detectably Catholic) and which ones are relatively insulated from political correctness. There is a danger in “conservative” college guides, of course — over the last 20 years, the Right has developed a static ideological picture of the nation’s campuses, which are now expected to be loony Left. When I entered Washington University in St. Louis in 1996, I expected to encounter indoctrination from day one; I even signed up for a pre-orientation program that I thought would be very politically correct, just so I’d be able to start fighting the Left even before classes started. Instead, the pre-o program, which did have its risible side, included volunteering at a pro-life women’s shelter. Wash U was no bastion of conservatism. But it wasn’t monolithically left-wing either. Not every campus that isn’t Hillsdale, Grove City, or Bob Jones resembles the right-wing caricature.

Choosing the Right College presents a much clearer-headed view of higher education than that, however. It certainly does call attention to left-wing absurdities and thought-policing where appropriate, but this book presents not merely a critique of what’s wrong with education but also an idea of what a university and its curriculum should be, which makes Choosing the Right College uniquely valuable for anyone in search of a genuine liberal arts education. It’s also well written, which is I wouldn’t say about many other college guides. At their best, the entries in this book are superb historical essays that capture the enduring character of the institutions profiled.