For Ryan and Sackrey’s volume not only offers academics from working-class backgrounds release from the private prisons of self-doubt and self-loathing, it raises the consciousness of all academics to the crucial positioning of knowledge workers and the knowledge industry in the class structure of late capitalism. It reminds us that, “universities are an integral part of the same class system that denies a fair shake to most of the population: they are a theater where people play
out the culture’s scripted roles as they struggle for recognition, reward, profit, a preferred place in the smaller or broader pecking order of the profession.” Moreover, because they act as credentialing agencies for corporate capitalism - certifying, accrediting, and tracking students - universities and their personnel are directly implicated in the reproduction of social injustice in America.