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ERIC Number: ED595199
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2018-Sep
Pages: 585
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: 978-0-9986635-7-9
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Beach Books: 2017-2018. What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read outside Class?
Randall, David
National Association of Scholars
The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has analyzed college common readings since 2010. Common reading selections partly reflect the constraints on their selection committees. Each year colleges admit large number of students who have not yet read a college-level book and some of whom have never read a full-length adult book at all. Faculty and staff members on selection committees all over the country have reported this problem. Another constraint is that common reading programs largely leave students the voluntary choice of whether to read the common readings, and there is no academic requirement to motivate students to read the assigned book. College common reading committees overwhelmingly prefer to select their readings from a narrow subsection of books: politically progressive, designed to promote activism, confined to American authors, literarily mediocre, juvenile, recently published, and mostly nonfiction. Non-academic mission statements steer selection committees away from intellectually challenging books toward books that promote progressive belief and/or activism; the selection committees are usually run or dominated by activist "co-curricular" administrators rather than professors; and common reading programs are frequently integrated with programs of servicelearning and civic engagement, which are designed to promote student activism rather than to educate students to think. "Beach Books 2017-2018" collects intensive data on 498 college common reading selections in 2017-2018 at 481 institutions, but it also surveys eleven years of college common reading programs, between 2007-2008 and 2017-2018. The report presents this data in part to the American public as a whole, to support its efforts to reform college common reading programs. "Beach Books 2017-2018" is organized into the following sections: (1) an introductory essay summarizing the report's conclusions; (2) an analysis of the 2017-2018 selections, including explorations of the implications of the #MeToo movement for common reading selections; (3) an analysis of the eleven years of selections between 2007/2008 and 2017/2018; (4) recommendations for how to reform college common reading programs; and (5) appendices with our full data, including an expanded list of 140 books the NAS recommends for colleges and universities with common reading programs. [For the previous edition, "Beach Books: 2016-2017. What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read outside Class?," see ED580915.]
National Association of Scholars. 221 Witherspoon Street 2nd Floor, Princeton, NJ 08542-3215. Tel: 609-683-7878; e-mail: nasonweb@nas.org; Web site: http://www.nas.org/
Publication Type: Reports - Research; Numerical/Quantitative Data
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: National Association of Scholars (NAS)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A