In 1941, W.H. Auden listed nearly 6,000 pages of required reading for an undergraduate course at the University of Michigan. In 2018, the historian Wilfred McClay tried recreating that course at Hillsdale College. It quickly became one of the school’s most popular classes, wildly oversubscribed. The undergraduates even printed up T-shirts that read, “I Survived the Auden Course!”
Perhaps that’s proof that students rise to the level of expectations. If universities demand reading, they will get it. But such fire-hose courses as Auden’s demonstrate something more. College graduates used to have stories of the trenches they loved to tell—stories about the backbreaking organic-chemistry course that decided medical-school admissions. The required engineering course on dynamics. The ridiculous French literature survey course that demanded studying everything from “Song of Roland” to “The Stranger.”
The experiment this fall at the University of Colorado will be to learn whether students respond with that kind of camaraderie and the grumbling pride of having to do strenuous intellectual work. This isn’t the end of reading but the beginning—giving students a frame into which they can place the books they go on to read as adults, because the art form of the novel matters, profoundly shaping modern civilization. The test will be to see whether students can read, even if thus far they don’t.
Stay tuned.