Weekly Briefing

Why aren’t your students reading?

• Students are coming to college with limited reading skills. Why? A confluence of factors — pandemic learning loss, problematic reading instruction dating back to elementary school, the ubiquity of smartphones, and a general reduction in reading for pleasure — all contribute to the decline in college-level reading skills. Our Beth McMurtrie spoke with students, instructors, and teaching experts to understand the downward shift. Can professors can make changes to help students develop the reading skills of yesteryear? Read Beth’s story to find out.
• How to quell the skepticism around college. There’s no avoiding people asking: “Is college worth it?” But that question is misguided, argues Phillip Levine and Luke Pardue in this Review essay. They write that college, like any investment, has benefits and costs. The wage difference between college-educated workers and their counterparts with only high-school diplomas may be the most obvious benefit. But that difference goes beyond the degrees. Read more.
• Israeli college presidents speak out against U.S. campus protests. Pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses have drawn criticism from parents, politicians, and now the leaders of Israel’s top research universities. It’s rare for college leaders in one country to comment on the campus controversies in another, but last month the presidents called the demonstrations disturbing in a joint statement. Our Karin Fischer interviewed one of those presidents, Ron Robin of the University of Haifa, in the Latitudes newsletter.
• Why tutoring hasn’t taken off as expected. A year ago, Miguel A. Cardona, secretary of education, asked colleges to increase the number of students who are employed as tutors, mentors, and other student-support workers in their work-study programs. The idea is that colleges will earn federal work-study funding and help schools recover from pandemic-related learning loss. But the tutoring program has gotten off to a slow start. Kelly Field explains why.

Lagniappe

• Learn. This newsletter and all your other internet communications — banking, scrolling, shopping — are powered by a network of cables in the bottom of the ocean. Here’s how and who repairs those cables. (The Verge)
• Read. Lately, contemporary fiction writers have published a handful of modern workplace novels — books that take place in offices and revolve around labor, like Severance by Ling Ma or The New Me by Halle Butler. The novel Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman is one of the latest in the genre. Her story takes place in a fictional big-box store in the Hudson Valley. To write the novel, Waldman’s research included working at such a store. (The New York Times, The Economist)
• Listen. Climate change is coming for your coffee, sea levels, chocolate, and now, home insurance. (The New York Times)

—Fernanda