Photo: Michal Kamaryt/CTK via ZUMA Press/Ben Margot/AP College students can’t read. Not a whole book, not with attention all the way through. Or so we’ve been told repeatedly over the past year.

Professors across the country have noticed a troubling trend: College students are reading less than ever, and a recent study found many students enter college with challenges completing an entire ...

I just completed a 40-plus-year career teaching literature courses to university students, and I agree with Mr. Malesic that today’s college students are not serious readers of literary texts.

Mr. Malesic is the author of “The End of Burnout.” He teaches writing at Southern Methodist University. In 2011, I taught a college class on the meaning and value of work. It was a general ...