Oprah to the Rescue?

According to a recent New YorkTimes article, Oprah Winfrey has recently declared that she is reviving her book club, much to the satisfaction of fans, bookstores, authors, and publishers alike. The New York Times described her as "the publishing industry's unrivaled tastemaker" because when Oprah puts her stamp of approval on something, that something usually receives immediate success in both sales and critics' reviews. As the amount of reading in America seems to be going down, I must say I was thrilled to find out that she will be restarting her book club. Hopefully reading will increase because "an Oprah title translated into skyrocketing sales".

One thing that has been upsetting people is the shift from traditional printed books to electronic reading sources like the Kindle, Ipad, phones, you name it. Personally, I believe that reading is reading and the medium by which people read does not matter as much as the fact that they are reading. Reading is the gateway to knowledge, and in recent years America's position as one of the most intelligent countries in the world has been threatened by countries like Russia and Canada where 54% and 28% of the population respectively has a college degree, compared to the United States' 40% (article).

I wonder if at a time when America may be declining, if something like having more influential people endorse reading and education can help. But can someone like Oprah really help? Secondary school costs are skyrocketing in America, whereas in other countries like Russia, schooling is free as long as you maintain good grades and a full coursework. If the cost of a college education remains so high, then college will be reserved only for the wealthy people who can afford to pay for it and people who are willing to take out huge loans that they know they will have to repay for many more years after they graduate. Can you expect someone to read when the future use of his or her knowledge is questionable? 

Two things to notice about this graph is that it is not as recent as the
article from which I took my data and that many sites have discrepancies
between which countries have the most college graduates.