The Atlantic recently published an article titled “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books,” discussing a trend of disinterest in class content by students at Columbia and other competitive schools. Their findings: book boring, brain rot in.
Investigating the claims in the article, The Fed conducted a campus-wide survey to determine what students truly want to read in class. All answers were write-in. Below are the top three suggestions:
- Big Nate
- Captain Underpants
- Colleen Hoover
When asked how professors can better engage their students, some said that they needed to adapt to class formats that are dopamine-inducing to the student body. “Instead of a two-hour lecture, how about 480 fifteen-second TikToks?” asked one. “That way I can scroll through the comments when I start zoning out.”
The Atlantic raises some valid questions: Is American higher education slowly descending into chaos? Sure. Should we be concerned about the degrading attention spans of the workforce of the near-future? Probably. But, counterpoint, algorithm good!
