Colleges are coddling kids with easier courses. Its going to backfire

Kids are arriving on college campuses with fewer skills and diminished attention spans.But, rather than challenge students, many colleges are lowering institutional standards to accommodate them.Colleges around the country have English courses that require students to read a single book all semester.

Ivy League schools are rolling out remedial math classes.And some schools are teaching kids skills as basic as structuring sentences.Colleges surely have a challenge on their hands as high schools graduate less distinguished classes, but lowering the bar is the sort of coddling that keeps kids from reaching their potential. College is meant to stretch you to your intellectual max.

It’s not a time for hand holding.The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the nation’s premier public universities, offers a three-credit course called “One Big Book That’s Worth It” — as though students need convincing that reading a whole book is a worthwhile endeavor.“This course guides students slowly and carefully through one extraordinary long book that is well worth the time and effort,” the catalogue listing reads.“Required text: one inexpensive book that you will never want to sell back.”Unfortunately, for Gen Z, this obvious statement might not be self-evident.Fordham University and Smith College also have courses in their English departments called “One Big Book.” And, in Boston, Suffolk University’s honors college offers the same.

The course aims “to strengthen students’ close reading skills” and “[divides] the long book into manageable weekly readings.”UNC has previously assigned George Eliot’s Middlemarch, and Smith College Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.The “One Series” of courses at UPenn assigns a single book, like Moby Dick or Shakespeare’s Richard III.It wasn’t long ago that students were expected to read a big book in a few weeks.

At Columbia, the core curriculum can demand 150 pages per class per week.But ...