Course texts logged as Sweden’s ‘reading crisis’ hits universities

In her 20 years of teaching literary studies, Sofia Ahlberg has noticed a change in her students’ relationship with reading, with many struggling to deal with longer texts, including novels.

But students are not just struggling to read more in-depth material, said Ahlberg, a professor and vice-dean at the Faculty of Languages at Uppsala University, they are also increasingly questioning the importance of reading at all.

“I’ve had students ask me why they should be sitting in a classroom when they could be much more effective engaging in activism,” she said. 

“When asked to read a novel, they typically find it hard to see the relevance of conventional reading methodologies.”

The Swedish government has been warning of a “reading crisis” in education for years, which it partly attributes to books being swapped out in classrooms in favour of digital devices in the 2000s and 2010s, a move that has now been reversed.

Sweden’s PISA reading score, a worldwide test conducted every three years, fell by 19 points in 2022 to 487, returning to roughly the same level it recorded in 2012 when the country had its lowest scores in the subject. About one in four 15-year-olds did not meet the minimum proficiency level in reading comprehension.

Now these young people have reached university, the government has increased its efforts to address the issue in higher education.

Since January, universities have been required to track and report the use of course literature, and how it is being promoted, as ministers believe there are signs that students are relying less on assigned books.

But researchers question whether the “reading crisis” is as severe as the government suggests and warn that there is a shortage of course books available, especially in smaller subject areas.

Linda Eriksson, a doctoral student at Örebro University, has studied Swedish university students’ reading habits. Her research finds that most students do read assigned material in Swedish, but they struggle with texts in English. “We concluded that the so-called reading crisis could be questioned,” she explained.

According to her research, around a third of students engage only selectively, or not at all, with assigned readings in English. While 86 per cent report that Swedish texts are easy to understand, only 61 per cent say the same about English material.

Undergraduate students are particularly affected. “Not even a fifth of Swedish students say they do all the mandatory reading,” Eriksson said. “But most do engage with the majority of their assigned material.”

Many students are unprepared for academic English, having been taught mainly everyday English in school, she explained. Reading speed and vocabulary remain significant obstacles. This has led to teachers spending class time explaining the readings rather than building on them.

There is also another issue that rarely gets discussed – the disappearance of course literature in Swedish itself. Ahlberg said Swedish language course literature was declining, especially in smaller subjects, as publishers tend to invest in textbooks for larger programmes, many of which were in English.

Course books have become expensive as a result of the shortage, “which in itself of course means that fewer and fewer courses rely on them”, she added. “I’m concerned about the fate of small subjects since they are unlikely at any time to receive dedicated course material unless their own teachers are given time to produce them,” she said.