Leland Miles has great timing with his humor. As a college president, he'd make his points with stories. "A noted professor of political science once said to me, 'You can talk all you want, but you'll never change my mind.'" He was obviously playing God, Miles writes in his new book "Provoking Thought: What Colleges Should Do for Students" (Phoenix Publishing, $30, 167 pp.). Miles continues, "Because St. Augustine, in the City of God, says that the only immovable object is the deity himself. If we are talking with another intelligent, well-informed person, we must concede the possibility of being persuaded to change our mind. The difference between the scholar and the fanatic is that the former's mind is open despite his learning, while the latter's is closed despite his ignorance."

Miles does his best to keep our minds open in this book. Readers will find it a grand trip through higher education. They'll see the issues and stumbling blocks that keep college presidents worrying all night. But most of all they won't lose sight of the reason most colleges exist, the student.

While his subject is serious, Miles approaches it with a light hand. He drives home his points through humor and stories. "People remember the point in a story, better than through straight exposition," he said. The trick to humor, he said, "is to keep it self depreciating." People don't take offense then, he said, and often "people will side with you."

Plenty of UB alumni, friends and people on campus remember Miles. He was president at UB from the early 1970s to the latter part of the mid 1980s. He came in and pulled the university out of deficit, but in his later years was fighting declining enrollments. The law school was started during his tenure, as were the centers for aging and venture management. Earlier he served as president of Alfred University, and had been a teacher and administrator at UB and the University of Cincinnati.

Miles writes about colleges he knows, where students do see their teachers and have the opportunity to interact. He writes about the divide between science and technology vs the arts and humanities. Most of it can be bridged and he talks of how, with plenty of examples from his UB days.

The most important points have to do with the student. "Colleges should encourage student to fail and recover, rather than to perform brilliantly and then fall hard when they sometimes do," he writes and repeats that theme often in his book. He says students need to learn what it takes to try something, fail and then pick themselves up and try it another way. College, he says, should be the place where it's safe to do that.

He warns parents to ease up on the pressure they can put on their children. They have to keep things in perspective, he advises, leading into one of his favorite stories, a letter by Sherry Addison, a Cornell sophomore, to her parents:

"Dear Mom and Dad, I've encountered a few problems in the past week. First, there was a fire in the dorm, started by my smoking in bed. The mattress caught fire and the new fall wardrobe you bought me burned up. There's also been a problem with the Volvo. A tree got in the way and I totaled the car."

Then she added another paragraph:

"Mom and Dad, I think the president here has gone crazy. He's ordered a tuition surcharge, which means I'll need an additional $1,500, over and above the cost of replacing the car and the clothing. Love, Sherry.

At the bottom, she wrote a P.S. "Please see reverse side." The trembling parents, Miles writes, turned the sheet over and read the following short note:

"Nothing I said on the other side of this letter really happened. What really did happen was that I got a "D" in Psychology, and I wanted you to keep it in perspective."

Miles' book is available at the University of Bridgeport Bookstore (203) 576-4803, and other independent and chain bookstores.