thank you so much for this!!! so, i'm not sure if you're a U.S student, but having done a semester of grad school now with a lot of students coming from higher ed in the global south, i think part of what you're touching on is a bigger issue in u.s academia (possibly also western europe but i only have thirdhand knowledge of this so i don't want to generalize)
u.s graduate education in the social sciences/humanities is deeply obsessed with bulk. you get assigned so many pages of reading that you are expected to skim it + not understand huge portions. there is an emphasis on shoving as much "canon" into you as possible (or new canon, for more progressive institutions who have their own new, progressive pet theorists). your understanding needs to be there but it can be cursory. it's about achieving familiarity with a wide field as quickly as possible.
papers need to touch on big names or address current popular theory in the field in order to get published. you have to publish to get jobs in academia. everyone bitches about the requirements for papers (including the editors + reviewers???); nobody seems to do anything massive to change it. if it's not peer reviewed, it's considered lesser, so the transformative works of ppl who cannot or will not play this name-dropping, editor bickering game gets delegated to second class info which can be added in so long as you tack on some canon.
in some ways, this experience is meaningful. i do believe that it's valuable to be familiar with current + past conversations in your field because that's how collaboration + new thought happens! but the practice of cramming books down your throat at a lightning pace, then never mentioning them again is not the norm everywhere + not the only way to achieve understanding of canon.
one of my classmates went to law school in india. she had class 2.5 hours per day, at the same time each morning, M-F. they were assigned a list of readings at the beginning of the class + asked to have them read by the end of the semester. class discussions + socializing would prompt students to read certain readings before others, to choose which readings to delve into more, + to help them understand or tackle readings which troubled them.
my point is not "the way they do it in other countries is better so we should do that instead! everything in the west sucks more!". it's just that there are other ways of achieving understanding of canon + generating new thought, but structural realities like paper publishing requirements, vicious competition for limited resources + deadlines on 5 years of poverty-level wages have locked grad programs into endorsing this particular form of learning. things are gained from this, but other things are lost- depth, art, community, pleasure.
the types of people who succeed + the kind of thought can be generated within these systems are limited by their very nature. the thought which is generated when leisure is encouraged, the pace is slow, art + depth are delved into, passion is encouraged, financial security is established + nobody is worried about making that thought marketable to a particular journal or field is very different. we are losing that thought + measuring progress or "rigor" (vom) in academia based on this particular, inaccessible, grueling, passionless, artless way of learning. to use a crude metaphor, it's industrial farming for potential researchers.
when ppl cannot handle this + conclude they're just incapable of engaging with academic thought at all or that something is wrong with them for being unable to keep pace, it makes me so, so sad. there are both old + new ways to learn + produce thought which you would thrive in (even if you are disabled, even if you are "lazy", even if you literally cannot read)+ those are neglected in favor of ones which generate the most financial gain or prestige (which creates financial gain)
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