“Bogner and Scott provide a unique perspective on the current debate questioning the value of higher education and affirm the value and positive outcomes of the collegiate experience. Letters to Students: What It Means to Be a College Graduate offers readers a refreshing perspective encouraging them to examine their values and explore how they can create meaningful and impactful lives as they pursue their academic and life goals. Every college student or graduate will be inspired by reading this book.”

Marylou Yam, president of Notre Dame of Maryland University

“Letters to Students: What It Means to Be a College Graduate takes a fresh approach to advising current undergraduates, recent graduates, and their families about the personal goals that can be achieved through a successfully completed undergraduate experience. Bogner and Scott have almost fifty years of combined experience as successful and accomplished higher education leaders and they are well worth listening to regarding their observation that ‘a college degree is, at the most fundamental level, about becoming your best self, becoming much more than a person who does a particular job.’”

Edward J. Ray, president emeritus of Oregon Sate University

I’ve recommended Letters to Students: What It Means to Be a College Graduate to a number of people at Cornell and elsewhere. Dr. Scott and Dr. Bogner complement each other nicely, and I admire how their voices remain distinct and distinctive, something essential in a book that celebrates and encourages young people to develop and honor their passions and intellect. From discussions of the practical—how to ask for help—to the ethical, this book is a welcomed primer. Yet most important for me is its high regard for an engaged citizenry: We are not isolates, and when we are we are in crisis. Letters to Students powerfully reminds us that we are interdependent, that our dreams are indissoluble from the dreams of others.

Kenneth Anderson McClane Jr., W. E.B. DuBois professor of literature, emeritus, Cornell University