Students Want More of Everything -- Except Reading

Last week I commented on students’ demands for “more” — greater and immediate access to faculty, more choices in residential living and dining, and better support services. The more students pay in tuition and fees, the greater the sense of entitlement.

But lately I’ve started to be concerned about something students don’t seem to want and that is, to use a vernacular phrase, homework. For the most part, students don’t mind coming to class but what they aren’t too keen on is reading.

My standard is my own freshman year, and the rigors of Columbia College’s core curriculum, the heart of which is Contemporary Civilization. We read continuously for 30 weeks, day and night, weekends included, in order to keep up with the syllabus. Devouring the classics (alas, in translation, though a few classmates, like Henry Ebel, taught themselves Greek for fun), reading our way through history, it was a tour de force for a first generation kid, something that opened my eyes to what college was all about, as well as to the foundation of Western intellectual thought.

But when I listen to students today chat (not, I hasten to point out, the ones in my very own class who are all good looking, strong, and above average) about their classes, I too often hear criticism of the work load rather than excitement about the subject matter, a complaint about the hours taken from meeting with friends or playing sports rather than engaging in debate, deciphering philosophy, history or a good poem. “Keep it neat, simple and to the point,” my faculty colleagues tell me. If I assign too much work, they say, students will write negative comments and the following semester enrollment will plummet.

When I asked my current class for their advice about how many books they thought I could assign next year when I reinvent the course, I began like an auctioneer with the number 14 — one for each week. “What do you think?” I asked. Not a single person agreed. How about 12, 10 or eight?” Reflecting on their colleague’s appetites, somewhere between 6 and 8, they advised. That felt about right to them. To me, however, it seems skimpy, thin, not rigorous enough. Maybe I’ll list eight and then “sneak” in extra readings along the way — handouts, journals, novellas, and a few little extras. “Where’s the beef?” may be the slogan for the dining hall but it isn’t the current cry for the classroom.

I’m not yet prepared to to give in to reading lite in the fashion of nouvelle cuisine. There is an academic joke that says the higher the tuition the more vacation days each semester. Perhaps to that we should add, and also the fewest pages per credit hour.