Professors at top California college forced to radically alter coursework as students struggle to read

Humanities professors at one of California’s most prestigious universities say they are assigning fewer pages, replacing full books with excerpts and rethinking coursework as students increasingly struggle to keep up with reading-heavy classes.

The concerns, raised by faculty at University of California, Berkeley, come amid a broader debate across the University of California about whether incoming students are arriving on campus academically prepared for college-level work.

Several professors told student newspaper The Daily Californian that reading expectations have steadily declined over the past two decades, prompting some instructors to scale back assignments in order to maintain meaningful classroom discussions.

Carlos Noreña, a history professor specializing in ancient history, said the amount of reading he can reasonably assign has fallen dramatically since he joined the Berkeley faculty in 2005.

“We are now reaching a crisis point where if the number (of pages) goes down further, it’s unclear to me whether my discipline of history can really be taught,” Noreña said.

According to Noreña, upper-division students once received roughly 100 pages of reading each week, with professors expecting them to complete most of the material. For a course he plans to teach this fall, that number will be closer to 35 pages per week.

Other professors reported making similar adjustments.

“Part of this is to spare students the cost of purchasing books, but part of it is also acquiescing to my sense of — and complaints about — the amount of reading assigned, though those complaints, curiously, haven’t gone away as I’ve shrunk the number of pages assigned,” Brilliant said.

Not all faculty members agree that students are reading less than previous generations. English professor Grace Lavery said she has maintained — and in some cases slightly increased — reading requirements in her classes.

“The reason is that the Dickens novels I teach are long and difficult,” Lavery said. “I imagine that if I had been teaching these novels in the same way back in the 1950s, I would have had exactly the same problems.”

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Some professors also expressed concern about students relying on artificial intelligence tools to summarize texts instead of engaging directly with the material.

“I found that very upsetting, because I’ve read the AI summary of my own book, and it’s all wrong,” history professor Trevor Jackson said. “Even a good summary is still not grappling with the text.”

The discussion comes as UC faculty elsewhere have raised alarms about academic preparedness in other subjects.

On Thursday, the University of California announced it will study whether to reinstate SAT and ACT testing requirements, six years after eliminating them from admissions the LA Times reported.

The review follows mounting pressure from more than 1,400 faculty members who argue that many students are entering college without the skills needed for rigorous coursework.

In a recent open letter, professors warned that preparation gaps have become so severe that some instructors are reteaching basic math concepts while attempting to cover college-level material.

The concerns were echoed in a 2025 report from University of California, San Diego that found a sharp increase in incoming students whose math abilities tested below high school levels.

UC Academic Senate Chair Ahmet Palazoglu said the university system has recognized that “academic preparedness for college is a growing challenge” and will spend the next year examining whether changes to admissions standards or high school course requirements are needed.