With your last point, I think there is a massive disconnect between how the university views its purpose, and what the society the students graduate into actually is. Of course the major publishers don't care if you can deconstruct Dickens, they pay millions of dollars for trite ghost written crap because it sells.

Arguably if you are an English major, you should leave with the ability to read dense texts, including archaic ones, but I don't really blame the students for seeing that it doesn't really matter because society at large does not care and they will graduate whether they can parse Dickens or not.

This all just results in a less literate society though, and I think that's a net negative overall.

[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago

I mean, yeah it would be a more literate society if most English majors could parse Dickens. But I don’t know if it’s less literate than back when most people didn’t even touch a college-level English course.