Perhaps the expectations on students are a bit unreasonable?

"Twenty years ago, Dames’s classes had no problem engaging in sophisticated discussions of Pride and Prejudice one week and Crime and Punishment the next."

Reading Crime and Punishment alone is estimated to take about 11-12 hours at 300WPM. Then consider your average student is taking 4 or 5 classes per semester? If they all assigned that much reading, that would be 60 hours a week of just reading, not even including time to process what's being read, or write assignments, revise etc.