The book reads like an extended rant written by a high-schooler on how the system, like, forces you to conform, and stuff. The anecdotes that are given in support of the "thesis" are seemingly randomly thrown in and range from long quotes about how one student had a bad advisor to some stuff on racial profiling and frisking on the streets. I am not typically a very discerning reader, but I had to put the book away after a brief amount of time. That almost never happens to me. Returning to the review with the above in mind the satire should become obvious as you get midway into the review:
"In developing his critique of professions, Schmidt draws on his own experiences and uses extensive quotes from correspondents, such as graduate students who became aware of the political nature of their training. This makes for an engaging account that feels authentic rather than remote in the conventional academic style.
Readers familiar with literature on the sociology of professions and the sociology of education may be surprised that Schmidt has few citations to it. He makes no mention of works on the professional-managerial class, such as Alvin Gouldner’s well known The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (1979), nor of critiques of professions such as Randall Collins’ The Credential Society (1979). Actually, Schmidt knew about such works but decided not to mention them because he found that they were not necessary to his argument. This may reflect his physics training. A social scientist would naturally become familiar with "the literature" and refer extensively to it, in order to show how their contribution relates to it. A theoretical physicist, on the other hand, may start out with a theoretical framework, such as Schrödinger’s equation in quantum mechanics, and derive logical consequences from it, without having to cite prior or related work.
That is essentially what Schmidt has done in Disciplined Minds. The book’s analysis is quite rigorous in its own terms. Schmidt has set various challenging fundamental questions for himself, such as why theory is more prestigious than practical work, systematically examined possible answers and then made a conclusion based on logic and evidence. His intellectual framework for this task can generally be characterized as a critique of domination and inequality coupled with support for egalitarianism and democratization. The result is bold and refreshing. While Disciplined Minds misses the more elaborate structural theories and empirical evidence from works in the sociology of education and professions, it redresses a key shortcoming in these works, namely a concern for analysis without ideas for change. Schmidt’s voice has the authenticity of experience and concern, and thus has a much more subversive quality."