Many colleges want their students to have read a book before they start their first semester. Not just any book, but one carefully selected by a committee to represent the college’s ideals and aspirations. Translation: No Impact Man in, classics out.

I am the co-author of the fourth annual National Association of Scholars study of freshman pre-reading assignments at 341 colleges. Beach Books 2013–2014: What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read Outside Class? shows that most of the books assigned in these “common reading” programs are fresh from the printer. More than half were from 2010 or later. Only five of the 341 colleges assigned a book from before 1900.

Colleges exclude the classics for three reasons. First, they say older books areirrelevant. Colleges fail to see how old-fashioned notions about marriage (e.g.,Anna Karenina), class warfare (A Tale of Two Cities), personal morality (Jane Eyre), or slavery (Huckleberry Finn) have anything to do with the world today. They are more interested in the topics du jour — some of which right now are immigration, racism, global warming, the elusiveness of the American Dream, LGBT life, genocide in Africa, “food justice,” and the war in Iraq.

Common reading is designed to mold students’ attitudes on current debates. Many of the readings are memoirs or biographies of social activists, which hint that students ought to follow suit. That’s why at least 68 percent of the colleges with these programs have the author speak on campus. This pursuit of relevance reflects the shift in higher education away from teaching students how to understand the world and toward shaping activists to change the world...