Going Around in Academic Circles: A Low View of Higher Education

by Richard Armour, Leo Hershfield (Illustrator)

The author draws on 37 years of teaching and deaning in colleges and universities to offer up what is, in effect, a parody of a college catalog. Armour gives the Armour treatment to such subjects as admissions, campus, roommates, expenses, employment, scholarships, class attendance, grades, physical education, the honor code, faculty advisers, department heads, the curriculum, and commencement speakers. This book is for everybody, but especially for presidents, deans, professors, alumni, students, drop-outs, drop-ins, and people with a sense of humor.

Genres: Humor

141 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1965

About the author

Richard Armour, a college professor of English who specialized in Chaucer and the English Romantic poets, was best known as a prolific author of light verse and wacky parodies of academic scholarship. He was a professor of English at Scripps College in Claremont from 1945 to 1966.

Armour was raised in Pomona, California, where his father owned a drugstore. He graduated from Pomona College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, then obtained his master's and Ph.D. in English literature at Harvard. He was a Harvard research fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum library in London.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing, but not as funny as the "Re-Lit" one I recently read.

[Emily]

A good book to read over breakfast, which is what I do. The chapter on commencement would have saved me $50 and three hours of my life had I but read it instead of attending mine.

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

My father picked this up for me on sale somewhere when I was in high school. I loved academic humor then. I still love Armour.