The University, an institution that has been called home by various revered literary supernovas like Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner and Rita Dove, is not a very literary place anymore. Walking through any of the University’s six main libraries, it feels harder to spot a student reading a book than it does to spot one using ChatGPT. The decline of reading at the University is in no way a unique phenomenon, even among elite schools. Surprisingly, attending a school with an acceptance rate scarily close to zero percent does not insulate someone from the effects of ever-present cell phones, artificial intelligence and the fact that fewer primary and secondary schools even bother assigning full books nowadays. The decline of reading at the University is a profound loss — its impact stretches so far beyond reading comprehension scores — but it is also a loss that can be turned around. Recentering the University around reading would better equip students for life in a digital era, instilling in them a deep commitment to learning and intellectual experimentation.
Today, human attention is the most valuable resource, and companies flood feeds with pop-up ads, short-form content and rage-bait to capture mere milliseconds of it. But the downstream consequence of this commodification is a stark decline in humans’ ability to focus for prolonged periods of time. It is no great mystery why students who, on average, lose concentration after just eight seconds struggle reading complex, long novels. But what makes reading so incompatible with the attention economy is exactly why it must be brought back at a place like the University.
It might sound odd, but reading has become an act of reclamation. It is distinctively imprisoning to be at the total mercy of the next push alert or scroll, so choosing to direct all your concentration to simply reading words on paper is liberating. In rejecting the addictive corporate algorithms meant to control your mind in the name of profit, you reclaim your own humanity. Teaching students the ability to disconnect themselves from this coercion must be one of the chief goals of the modern university. Additionally, the ability to focus on something for longer than a few seconds is vital for living a healthy, full life — getting difficult tasks done, listening to others and remembering things, just to name a few benefits. Protecting these skills would also help students shed their growing reliance on AI, which threatens to even further intensify our reliance on technology and lack of critical thinking skills. By teaching students how to reclaim their attention in an era of inattention, a reading-centered University would create more independent, happier and smarter graduates.
One of the biggest reasons the University has become less literary is the turn away from genuine intellectual curiosity and towards careerism. Economic anxieties paired with jaw-dropping tuition costs have led students and universities alike to abandon the humanities and embrace pre-professional and STEM programs in the hopes of getting a better return on investment. This shift has created a culture where students are more interested in reaching the next step in their journey towards a six-figure job than they are in self-improvement through education. Of course, this approach to learning leaves little room for reading — professors of all subjects have been continually shortening syllabi’s reading lists for years. But intellectual exploration is the bedrock of the University’s mission, and reading is an inextricable part of that.
Thomas Jefferson, who spent his life studying a truly unbelievably wide array of topics — including math, philosophy, law, geology, botany and at least eight languages — specifically built the University around an elective course of study, encouraging students to pursue three different subjects, thus making sure they would come away with deep, expansive knowledge spanning multiple fields. Students with a strong interdisciplinary education would, in Jefferson’s view, have the broad worldview and critical thinking skills to become the next generation of responsible citizens and leaders. This still rings true today, as anti-intellectualism has undeniably contributed to our polarized, cruel and increasingly authoritarian political environment. Moreover, reading fits right into this interdisciplinary mission — books cover an unquantifiable expanse of topics, often spinning distant ideas together in previously unthinkable ways. Jefferson certainly recognized the importance of reading, putting it simply in a letter to John Adams, “I cannot live without books.” Turning the University back into a space where reading drives academic exploration would reinvigorate students with a deeper sense of meaning, forming life-long learners rather than pumping out careerists.
But how is the University, or any institution, actually going to turn back the clock to a time before reading became unnecessary? It is, admittedly, not an easy question to answer. But the University has the ability to try. Armed with an eye-wateringly large endowment, a uniquely passionate faculty and a literary tradition that reminds us what is possible, the University is strong enough to stand as a bastion of reading in an unliterary world. It will require a broad, ambitious movement, including all parts of the University community. Faculty will have to expect more of their students, assigning longer and more difficult readings. Students will have to push their own limits by doing those readings. Administrators must stave off the temptations of AI, choosing human creativity over robotic efficiency. And librarians need to continue their heroic efforts at teaching the power of reading to anyone who will listen. If all this happens, we can together restore the University to its rightful place as a literary mecca.
But this all sounds difficult, or maybe even impossible. Well, all you can do to make a difference is read. Just pick up a book! It really is that simple. By reintroducing ourselves to the joy of sitting down with a good book, learning something new or just entertaining ourselves, we make progress, however incremental, towards bringing reading back. In the words of the University’s first writer-in-residence, William Faulkner, “Read, read, read.”
Beckett Anderson is an opinion columnist who writes about politics for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. Columns represent the views of the authors alone.
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