College reading has had a very long history, with its roots in a program developed at Wellesley College in 1894. Even though there is a wide body of instruction-centered research and practice, college reading is often misunderstood on college campuses. However, in the past five to ten years, there'has been growing national recognition of this field as truly developmental (not remedial) and credible in terms of curriculum, research, and institutional stature (Maya, 1995;Wyatt, 1992). The emergence of the freshman year curriculum at many institutions and general education revisions focusing on essential communication slalls of students represent some of the components of this resurgence.
A better understandmg of the role of reading as a college outcome is arising because of workplace expectations and many leading professional accreditation agencies, such as the Accredmion Board for Engineering and Technology (Enpeering Accreditation Commission, 1996) and the Accounting Education Change Commission (Gainen and Locatelli, 1995). Additional external forces include the U.S. Department of Labor's SCANS report (1991) and various other reports related to requisite workplace communication skills. These reports all reaffirm the importance of communication skills (including reading) as the foundation skills and workplace competencies that employers value. Employers want people in their organizations who "read and understand literal and implied meanings of textual material similar to that found in the workplace" (Nowlin, 1996, p. 5). The recent emergence of information competence expectations may also support the viability of college reading as an outcome and the credlbility of related curricula (Batson and Bass, 1996; Cunon, 1995). The most SETTING EXPECTATIONS FOR STUDENT LEARNING important work for raising expectations for critical reading outcomes, however,