Being in one university of Columbus, where students from all kinds and races in the world, struggle against coping with each other and with their problems, as they all suffer from racial discrimination they receive, according to their black color. On the other hand, they learn a lot from this academic life.
A stylish, intelligent film-maker, Singleton interweaves the threads of his demographic tapestry with assurance, passion and a welcome awareness of the complexities of the college community's contradictory impulses towards integration and separatism.
Higher Learning has a great many things on its mind, which immediately places it in a rather exclusive category of American films these days.
New Times
November 03, 2005
For anyone who's been to USC, it's a pretty hilarious parody of life there. If you take it as presented, however, it's over-dramatic and unbelievable.
Los Angeles Times
February 13, 2001
Presenting problems is not the same as dramatizing them successfully, and as strong as his message is, Singleton has not found the best way to deliver it.
Everyone here, from beer-swilling white fraternity boys to rap-loving black students harassed by the campus police, can be judged at face value. Everyone is exactly what he or she seems.
Rolling Stone
May 12, 2001
Higher Learning is often clichéd, unfocused and didactic. But Singleton has a goal most of his contemporaries have given up on: He wants to make a movie that makes a difference.
KFOR Channel 4 News
January 27, 2004
John Singleton at his most pretentious and preachy.
TV Guide
July 25, 2010
Singleton gets points for exposing the hypocrisy of "politically correct" institutions, but stilted dialogue and cardboard characterizations undermine the message.
Despite some likable performances (Epps is especially winning), the drama in Higher Learning is constricted, hemmed in by Singleton's compulsion to view his characters as walking paradigms of racial and sexual politics.
