What scares me is the fact that, for several reasons, undergraduates are not held to the same standards of research or background understanding as I think they used to be. In part, this is because there is an increasing pressure to gain "practical experience" in the form of internships and campus activities, which I suspect now take up a significant percentage of time for undergrads.

Second, the high level of computer and Internet literacy among today's undergraduates might be shortening attention spans and definitely limits dependency on that institution called the library. I taught an undergraduate communications course for 20 freshmen this year (at BU) and I begged my students to go to the library to complement the research they found online for the two research papers they were assigned. As I recall, two of the 20 students actually went to the library. In theory, there is a great deal available on the internet, but these students were not taking full advantage of that either. What they were doing was finding articles quickly that met the minimum requirements of the assignment. This scares me.

Third, I think undergrads today grow up with a greater respect for their own abilities and a lesser respect for "dead white men" (pardon the canonical generalization, I know that literature is not solely dead white men). This is where I am slightly more conflicted. I think for any profession the most qualified are those that have done their homework -- those that have a sense of history and background in the subject. On the other hand, where writing is concerned, one hopes to be open to the vast possibilities of human creativity, which begs the question: what might be created by people approaching the writing process without a background in literature? Might we be on the verge of a new era in literature that has merits all its own?

Personally, while it's possible, I don't think so. I think it's unfortunate that students are not pursuing the study of literature as ardently as they might. I think that writing without a background should be reserved for savants who clearly have a natural gift for the art.

As an afterthought, one should never forget the eternal presence of the market gods in this question. Technological advances in home computing systems and quasi-universal access to the internet have made self-publishing very easy. I think this is good in terms of the exchange of ideas, but as far as what is getting picked up by professional publishers -- there's no shortage of crap out there. (Not to go Jonathan Franzen on anyone, but really...) There may be a diminishing market for informed writers depending on the quality of the readers out there.

-- Sandi Reinardy, Graduate student of journalism / Freelance writer / Boston University (posted 3/11, 10:20 a.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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