People do a lot of reading within their lifetime. Some of that reading is for a class that they are taking and sometimes it is for their own enjoyment. The study “Reading, Risk, and Reality: College Students and Reading for Pleasure” addresses the reading habits of college students. It is a common belief that college students and those born in the digital age do not like to read for fun. Julie Gilbert and Barbara Fister created their own study to see if this belief is true and what can be done to get college students to do more reading outside of class. They are trying to get college students to “free read” more so that they can also receive the benefits of leisure reading.

 In their study, Gilbert and Fister found that the previous notion that college students do not want to read for pleasure was actually false. They found that students wanted to read for fun and enjoyed reading, but there were many obstacles that kept them from being able to read for fun. Some of those obstacles included students not having the time to read, not knowing what to read, not having a section in a campus library for leisure reading, having to think critically about what they were reading, and not finding books that they were interested in reading.

Gilbert and Fister point out that college students are given a lot of material to read for each of their classes. It is part of the learning process, but sometimes the amount students are given to read for a class is too much. Students can barely cover the readings they are required to for class, let alone read for their own leisure. They do not have the time to read for fun as they are consumed by classwork. The authors propose that campus libraries then make the checkout period for books longer so that students can read them over breaks in the winter, spring, and summer when they are not given a huge load of classwork.

Sometimes students have the desire to read, but they do not know what to read. They want to know what books would be the most beneficial to them in their studies. Gilbert and Fister propose that professors create lists of books that students could read at their own leisure. Those books would correlate with what was being taught in the class, or they would further develop the skills taught in class. They would help give students an idea of the types of books that would be the most beneficial for them to read outside of their classwork.

Some campus libraries in colleges and universities do not have much money in their budget, so they do not bother having a fiction section. This puts the students who enjoy reading fiction at a disadvantage when they are trying to find books to read for fun. Some students may not have any other access to places to find books, so if the campus library does not have any fiction books, then the student does not have access to an entire genre of books that many people enjoy reading. Along with suggesting that college campus libraries have fiction books, Gilbert and Fister suggest that libraries have their general fiction section separate from their literature sections. That would make it easier for students to differentiate which books were mostly read for pleasure from the books that would most likely required to read for a class. Separating those sections would make it easier for students to find the kind of book that they are looking for to read.

Then Gilbert and Fister point out that reading for leisure and reading for a class is different in that reading for a class requires students to think critically about what they are reading. That involves taking an in-depth look at a reading and making an analysis from it. When students have to think critically about a reading, then they usually are not able to enjoy the reading as the would if they were reading for fun. Students have to read differently when they are reading to think critically and when they are reading for their own leisure.

Overall, the goal of Gilbert and Fister’s study was to provide ways for college students to increase the amount that they read for their own leisure. They think that they can get college students to do more leisure reading through the ideas that they propose and that students want to do more leisure reading. They justify the latter belief through the results of a survey that they gave to college students at Gustavus Adolphus College, a private liberal arts college. The problem with their justification, though is that those results may not be the same for every college in the United States. They might not even be the same for the majority of students at Gustavus since the study does not tell us how many students took the survey in the first place.

To determine the value of Gilbert and Fister’s study, further research needs to be done on the ideas that they propose. Since, they provide no data on how effective their ideas are, someone needs to go out and try the ideas that they are suggesting to see if they work. If any of them work, then the study has value to those interested in increasing the amount that college students read for leisure. But if all of their proposed ideas fail, then the study has little to no value. Once the value of the study has been determined, it can then be decided how it should be incorporated onto college campuses and libraries across the United States.