I've been teach college students for decades. Most of them can no longer finish a book

For two decades, I have taught humanities and social sciences at Amherst College. My courses relied on a single, core expectation: that students would complete the assigned reading. Lately, that expectation feels outdated. Students now frequently visit my office not to discuss a text, but to ask how to skim it. I deny these requests, insisting on close, deliberate reading. However, I am increasingly convinced that the challenge is systemic rather than individual.

Data confirms this decline. High school English teachers now assign significantly fewer full books than they did fifteen years ago. Many students graduate without finishing a single complete book in their high school career. The problem extends to the adult population as well. Recent federal data shows that fewer adults read books for pleasure, and literacy proficiency among high school seniors has dropped since the early 2000s.

We are witnessing a shift in how students engage with complex material. Reading requires patience, attention, and the capacity to follow a difficult argument. It functions like physical exercise. Without sustained effort, that capacity withers. If educators do not insist on the importance of reading long texts, the future of higher education remains in doubt. We owe it to our students to teach them that the value of a text lies in its entirety, not in the summaries or shortcuts.