The student was angry. Why hadn’t I mentioned there was a shorter version of the book I assigned for this week’s class? After brashly announcing she had unearthed an earlier article by the author ("Same thing, right?"), she instructed me that anything said in a book could be reduced to an article. The rest is just padding.
For some years, the amount of reading we assign university students has been shrinking. A book a week is now at best four or five for the semester; volumes give way to chapters or articles. Our motivation is often a last-ditch attempt to get students to actually read what’s on the syllabus. Other factors include the spiraling cost of textbooks and copyright limitations on how much we may post digitally.
By Naomi S. Baron
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http://m.chronicle.com
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