Today the National Association of Scholars is launching its latest report, Beach Books 2017-2018: What Do Colleges Want Students to Read Outside Class?. This eighth edition of Beach Books finds that American colleges and universities run common reading programs designed to indoctrinate students with progressive propaganda.
Hundreds of American colleges and universities assign a summer reading to entering freshmen. NAS publishes the nation’s only comprehensive list of common readings. The newest edition lists and analyzes 498 assignments at 481 colleges located in 47 states. This new edition of Beach Books also includes eleven years of information from 2007/2008 to 2017/2018. It covers 732 individual colleges and universities, 4,754 assignments, and 1,655 individual texts.
Assignments tend to be contemporary memoirs and popular nonfiction that endorsed politically progressive perspectives on affirmative action, gay, lesbian, and transgender life, global warming, illegal immigration, racial identity, recycling, sexism, incarceration, or wealth.
Beach Books 2017-2018 revealed that most colleges choose books that are: younger than students, pro-progressive activism, and predictable.
NAS makes 50 recommendations for improving common reading programs, including 130 better books to welcome incoming freshman to the life of the mind.
“Colleges should not cheat students out of an excellent education. They should expose students to great books: books that explore the great mysteries of being human; books that pose hard questions; books that demonstrate excellent writing and excite students to think and write well,” said NAS president Peter Wood. “Colleges need to demonstrate value. Common readings can and should push students to excellence.”
Get an Alert for the Launch Event Live Stream >>
For more information join NAS next Wednesday, October 3, for a conference call to discuss NAS’s eighth edition of Beach Books, the nation’s only exhaustive list of the common readings colleges and universities assigned to students over the summer. For many students, this is the only book they will read in common with their classmates. Join Research Director David Randall as he unveils the key trends and data that NAS found, along with our proposals for reform.
What: Conference call introducing NAS’s Beach Books Report
When: Wednesday, October 3, 3:00-4:00 PM Eastern
Where: Call in to 1-903-230-0168 and use the conference code 3534925
