@alex

One develops the muscles of reading effectively by reading with self-directed purpose. Reading to get something out of the text, something the author may not even have intended; not because one is going to be graded on having done the reading in accordance with external expectations.

Likewise one develops the muscles of writing by writing to work out one's own ideas in an expressive form, not because anyone is going to grade one for doing so. Let alone because anyone is going to give you a job on the say so of those doing the grading.

But if one arrives at college not having developed those muscles—if one arrives at college seeing reading and writing as tasks to be performed to prove to some external authority that you did the thing assigned to you—then of course shortcuts will be sought, as they always have been when someone is doing work that they see as a social expectation and nothing more.

And that's a sociological phenomenon that would seem worth study.

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