In 2011, Arum and Roksa challenged the higher education community to examine its practices and improve its performance in Academically Adrift. While recognizing the near universal accessibility achieved by American colleges and universities, the study suggested that students are not learning as well as they should. They measured academic rigor by considering the amount of reading and writing required of students and questioned whether courses are appropriately rigorous. Considering auditing as the accounting course most likely to require writing as well as reading, this study explored the auditing course for the condition of "academic rigor" as defined in the challenge.