The Open Syllabus Projectwants to make the world of higher education more guileless . Last hebdomad they released information on the most frequently assigned books at English - spoken communication colleges around the world based on a database of over one million syllabi . The list , which allow fascinating sixth sense into 21st C academia ( and some pretty skilful rule book recommendations ) , can be filtered by foundation , location , and landing field .
Perhaps unsurprisingly , English - verbalize colleges love the Ancient Greeks . Of the top 20 most frequently assigned books , more than a fourth part are by Greek playwrights , poet , and philosophers such as Aristotle , Homer , and Sophocles . Plato’sRepublic , meanwhile , is the second most - assigned Scripture after William Strunk ’s writing guide , The Elements of Style .
manly writers incur plenteous histrionics on the list . In fact , only two of the top 20 author are distaff : Mary Shelley , whose novelFrankensteinis in fifth place , and Kate L. Turabian , whoseA manual of arms for Writers of Term Papers , Theses , and Dissertationsis in 13th .
Overall , the top 20 inclination holds few surprise : Many of these books have probably been assigned indication since the earliest day of gamey education . There ’s Hobbes’Leviathanin 7th place , Machiavelli’sThe Princein eighth , and Shakespeare’sHamletin tenth . But , if you dribble the list by institution , location , or study , it starts to become more interesting : Yale ’s numeral one al-Qur’an , for example , is Plato’sRepublic , while Oberlin , a large-minded artistic creation college known for the alternative spirit of its students , lists Marx’sCommunist Manifestoas its most frequently put reading .
The reading selection also becomes more varied when filtered by commonwealth . The most frequently assigned Scripture in Oregon , for example , is Chinua Achebe’sThings Fall Apart , while Colorado loves assign David Besanko’sMicroeconomics , and Connecticut ca n’t get enough of Samuel Huntington’sThe Clash of Civilizations .
Whether you ’re curious about the United States Department of State of higher didactics , a bookworm , or both , the list make fascinating reading . ascertain it outhere .
[ h / t : Quartz ]
