Cover Story OFF COURSE by Karen Lehrman Visits to four colleges raise a disturbing question: Is women's studies failing women?

THE TRUTH SQUADS
by John Brodie
Those TV "magazines" are popping up all over the tube. Which ones can you trust? PLUS an exclusive rating of the shows by those who bring them to you.

THE FALL OF ROME
by Frank Viviano
The Italians are always changing the bathwater, but this time they're throwing out the baby, too.

IT AIN'T OVER 'TIL THE FAT MAN THINS
by Robert L. Borosage
The Pentagon is eating away at our future security.

SPECIAL SECTION ON EDUCATION

OFF COURSE
by Karen Lehrman
Visits to four colleges raise a disturbing question: Is women's studies failing women?

PRO-CHOICE
Josh Clark interviews Clinton adviser David Osborne
A little competition might turn our public schools around.

AS THE WORLD LEARNS
by Diane Brady
Why America must demand higher standards from its students.

THE BOOK OF NO JOB
by Jonathan Marshall
Employers who rail against the hopeless state of American schools are scapegoating education for their own failures.

DEPARTMENTS

EDITOR'S NOTE
BACKTALK Congress's frosh "reformers" get steamed (at us).
OUTFRONT
Meet Leon, the money man
Hooked on bullets
How Jody Powell invents "grassroots" support for the drug industry
Hollywood backbyting
Notes from the front
Hellraiser
MUCK A car packed with passengers suddenly brakes in front of you on a freeway. You crash. Welcome to insurance fraud in the 1990s.
by Ashley Craddock and Mordecai Lawrence.
ERIC ALTERMAN The Democrats' fatal free fall.
PAULA POUNDSTONE Why is everyone picking on Bill?