Inventing the University

• Students must write what universities want to see.
• analyzes the work of basic writers (whose writing didn't impress the university) and successful writers (whose writing did impress the university).
• "To speak with authority student writers have not only to speak in another's voice but through another's "code"; and they not only have to do this, they have to speak in the voice and through the codes of those of us with power and wisdom..." (p. 17)
• Basic writers don't necessarily make a lot of mistakes in their writing (sentence level errors), but just don't know how to operate within the specific discourse community that they need to be operating in.