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If you compare a 2007 survey on Cal reading tastes to similar surveys administered in 1997 and 1987, what can you infer about Berkeley students? Perhaps we should be afraid–very afraid. In the past 20 years, student preferences strayed away from poignant classics like “The Fountainhead” and “The Color Purple,” to lucrative bestsellers like “Harry Potter” and the “Da Vinci Code.” Alright, we admit it–we read and loved both bestsellers–but what does it mean that the most elite public education institution in the world prefers contemporary fluff over literary heavyweights? Could it be a sign of the apocalypse?
Perhaps, but it could also be that “(t)he 1987 survey, like the ‘97 version, was conducted simply by distributing sheets of paper to freshman English classes,” while the most recent one was a “web-based summer/fall 2007 Survey of New Students (SoNS)” from 2,875 freshmen in every major.
Obviously, that explanation isn’t as fun.
