This academic year, some English professors have increased their preference for physical copies of readings, citing concerns related to artificial intelligence.
Many English professors have identified the use of chatbots as harmful to critical thinking and writing. Now, professors who had previously allowed screens in class are tightening technology restrictions.
Professor Kim Shirkhani, who teaches “Reading and Writing the Modern Essay,” explained that for about a decade prior to this semester, she did not require printed readings. This semester, she is requiring all students to have printed options.
“Over the years I’ve found that when students read on paper they're more likely to read carefully, and less likely in a pinch to read on their phones or rely on chatbot summaries,” Shirkhani wrote to the News. “This improves the quality of class time by orders of magnitude.”
As the course director for “Reading and Writing the Modern Essay,” Shirkhani leaves the decision of allowing technology in the classroom up to each individual instructor. Yet others have followed her practice.
Last semester, professor Pamela Newton, who also teaches the course, allowed students to bring readings either on tablets or in printed form. While laptops felt like a “wall” in class, Newton said, students could use iPads to annotate readings and lie them flat on the table during discussions. However, Newton said she felt “paranoid” that students could be texting during class.
This semester, Newton has removed the option to bring iPads to class, except for accessibility needs, as a part of the general movement in the “Reading and Writing the Modern Essay” seminars to “swim against the tide of AI use,” reduce “the infiltration of tech,” and “go back to pen and paper,” she said.
Regarding the printing cost, Newton and Shirkhani both emphasized that Yale has programs to help students who need financial assistance paying for printing.
“I totally get that cost and the burden of that cost,” Newton said in an interview. “I kind of feel like there's going to be a book in most classes that you have to buy, and the course package just sort of replaces a physics textbook.”
Spring semester courses offered a total of 34 TYCO packets this year, up from 20 at the same point last spring, according to archived versions of the TYCO Student Course Packet website. Fall semester courses increased from 30 packets in 2024 to 35 last semester.
TYCO Print is a printing service where professors can upload course files for TYCO to print out for students as they order. Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option.
Other English professors are maintaining preexisting no-technology policies.
Professor Nancy Yousef, continuing from her approach at previous schools, has kept a requirement for printed readings.
“The English classroom is increasingly a kind of special place where it’s still possible to converse without the screen,” Yousef said in a phone interview. “AI only seems to make it more imperative to make sure that students are having a direct experience with the text.”
Yousef explained that literature courses are a “practice of attention and a practice of learning how to ask a good question.” Yousef said she hopes students come away from class with greater questions and increased engagement with the texts rather than “a set of bullet points that can go on a PowerPoint.”
Writing professor Anne Fadiman wrote to the News that she asks students either to buy the course packet or purchase physical copies of the books.
“When you read a book or a printed course packet, you turn real pages instead of scrolling, so you have a different, more direct, and (I think) more focused relationship with the words,” Fadiman wrote.
Professors who continue to allow technology in their classroom cite printing costs and concerns about paper usage.
Professor Stephanie Kelley does not require students to bring printed readings and allows technology “for accessibility, cost-related and environmental reasons.” While she has noticed students being distracted during class, such as by online shopping, she wrote to the News that “it can be a lot of paper, most of it going straight in the bin once class is done.”
Kelley wrote that she wonders why the discussion of course material costs “more often falls on humanities classes rather than those with required textbooks that are often prohibitively expensive to rent or purchase.”
In the fall, Yale College Council Senators Siena Valdivia ’28, Alex Chen ’28 and Alexander Medel ’27 — who is a staff writer for the News — sponsored a $3,500 stipend prioritizing first-generation, low-income students to receive financial aid for printing costs. Medel and Senator Aaron Lin ’28 also sponsored a $6,000 stipend to “alleviate the cost of course materials and textbooks for Yale College students.” These stipends come from the YCC budget.
“In an ideal world, printing would be subsumed into the fiscal responsibilities of the university. But under further priority reconfiguring in light of the endowment tax, any such changes face an uphill climb,” Chen wrote to the News, referring to the upcoming increase in the federal tax on Yale’s investment returns, which was enacted as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year.
For Yale students, printing one double-sided black-and-white page on a University printer costs 12 cents.