The list of books most assigned in colleges and universities is a peek into the future.
Below are the titles with the highest frequencies, drawn from more than six million syllabi from courses around the globe, sourced by the Open Syllabus Project 2026.
| No | Titles | Appearances | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Calculus by James Stewart | 18,299 | 100 |
| 2 | The Elements of Style by William Strunk | 15,020 | 100 |
| 3 | Social Research Methods by Alan Bryman | 14,704 | 100 |
| 4 | Human Anatomy and Physiology by Elaine Nicpon Marieb | 14,542 | 100 |
| 5 | English Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy | 14,101 | 100 |
| 6 | Research Design by John W Creswell | 13,199 | 100 |
| 7 | Doing Your Research Project: A Guide for First-Time Researchers in Education and Social Science by Judith Bell | 13,021 | 100 |
| 8 | Biology by Neil Alexander Campbell | 12,532 | 100 |
| 9 | A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers by Kate L Turabian | 12,299 | 100 |
| 10 | The Study Skills Handbook by Stella Cottrell | 12,026 | 100 |
| 11 | Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS by Andy P Field | 11,610 | 100 |
| 12 | Orientalism by Edward W. Said | 10,652 | 100 |
| 13 | Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx | 10,629 | 100 |
| 14 | Marketing Management by Philip Kotler | 10,263 | 100 |
| 15 | Molecular Biology of the Cell: The Problems Book | 10,159 | 100 |
| 16 | Imaged Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism | 10,125 | 100 |
| 17 | Introduction to Algorithms by T H Corman | 9,785 | 99 |
| 18 | They say/I say by Cathy Birkenstein | 9,785 | 99 |
| 19 | A Pockey Style Manual by Sommers | 9,336 | 99 |
| 20 | The Craft of Research by Wayne C Booth | 9,336 | 99 |
There are several trends to observe, made possible by the search tools and visualisations the Project provides.
The most-read title is Calculus by James Stewart. Published on May 7, 2015, this textbook is known for its clear explanations and mathematical precision, which help build students’ understanding and confidence in calculus concepts. There are nine editions to the textbook, and Stewart has also released several other books related to calculus, including Essential Calculus, Biocalculus, and Brief Applied Calculus.
The Elements of Style by William Strunk has dropped from first to second place among the most-read books. Composed in 1918 and published in 1920, this style manual offers practical advice on improving writing skills, with an emphasis on plain English. There are eight “elementary rules of usage”, 10 “elementary principles of composition”, “a few matters of form”, a list of 49 “words and expressions commonly misused,” and a list of 57 “words often misspelled.”
The appearance of these titles at the top of the list is unsurprising, given the importance of maths and academic writing in higher education.
The following two titles – Social Research Methods by Alan Bryman and Human Anatomy and Physiology Manual by Elaine Nicpon Marieb – won’t raise too many eyebrows, as both are on to how to conduct research.
There has been an increase in the incorporation of research in undergraduate and post-graduate curricula.
Research method books have now become guides for navigating complex academic requirements, such as writing theses, dissertations, and even term papers, and that places Research Design by John Creswell and Doing Your Research Project: A Guide for First-Time Researchers in Education and Social Science at sixth and seventh place, respectively.
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx dropped from sixth place to 13th place. What’s more notable about Marx’s book isn’t that it’s turning future economists toward a socialist utopia.
Instead, it stands out for being widely assigned across many fields, including history, political science, sociology, and English literature, rather than economics, according to Project Director and Vice President of the Public Policy Institute at Columbia University, Joe Karaganis.
“That’s a very unusual characteristic for a text. In most fields, most texts are assigned in one field or two, maybe,” he told EdSurge.
Literary canons are nearly non-existent now, too. After the canon wars in the 80s and 90s, Karaganis noted that no new, diverse canon has been created, but it is now usual for professors to choose new books for their students to read.
“It seems likely that the idea of a canon itself was weakened,” he said, as reported by FastCompany. “There’s very little sign of dominant new literature titles from the past 10 to 15 years.”
For its 2019 data, the massive trove of empirical data, made possible by the Public Policy Centre at Columbia University, reveals the knowledge and facts that will drive future leaders.
David McClure, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab who’s helping to build the Open Syllabus Project, explains to EdSurge how this was done:
“Basically, we just go out on the public web, get these documents, and then each kind of represents one professor’s little view on how to teach something, what matters, what’s important, what’s the sequence between the different readings, how they relate to each other.
“In the past, we encountered these documents on a one-off basis as students, but now we have this huge sea of about six million of them, and it just makes it possible to start to analytically try to understand the whole teaching and learning system all at once.”
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