“Percentile is destiny in America,” writes Walter Kirn, author and formerly shameless Ivy League social climber, in his new book about his old identity. Americans have trouble understanding themselves without the aid of numbers, and nowhere is this obsession more evident than the realm of education. We are a nation of grade grubbers and school rankers. But lately, as the US slips further and further down international lists of educational achievement, our old tactics don’t seem to be getting us anywhere. In this issue of Last Exit, we take a hard look at why.

When a student demanded to know just what constituted a B+, Joe Milutis, an assistant professor of interdisciplinary arts at the University of Washington-Bothell, responded with a comprehensive key to grading the humanities.

Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, offers up a manifesto for a new journalism school education in the age of struggling news institutions that jettisons the old ideas of neutrality in the face of corporate dominance.

Last Exit contributing editor Bryan Joiner examines how the financial crisis displayed a new model of horizontal reporting that could provide hope for the industry.

Last Exit art critic Cindy Daignault celebrates the Hunter College MFA building, a last, endangered remnant of New York’s grimier, sexier days.

Last Exit flavor columnist Anne Dailey, a recovering vegetarian, describes the day she learned to kill what she ate.

And Keach Hagey, Last Exit’s co-editor, interviews Thomas Toch about the arms race of escalating college tuition, the difference between cost and quality, and President Obama’s grade on education policy.

— The Editors