By 2011, “60 Minutes” and the journalist Jon Krakauer had revealed that Mr. Mortenson fabricated or exaggerated incidents in the book, and colleges soon turned their backs on it.

Even titles barely older than a high school sophomore have fallen out of favor. “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2001 undercover account of work and life in minimum-wage America, seems as topical today as it was when it was first published. But after a good run in its first decade, few colleges are assigning it now.

Most colleges choose recent, accessibly written books to ensure that incoming freshmen actually read them, said Keith Goldsmith, executive director for academic marketing at Knopf Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House. After all, except in those cases where the reading is linked to a first-year class or a required writing assignment, students juggling summer jobs and summer flings are free to skip these books.

“It has to be a book that’s going to engage them right off the bat,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “Classics can do that, but oftentimes it’s difficult. Those books require a bit more training and guidance.”

Read a Book, Not Your Phone

Among universities that do assign books from the Western canon, a popular choice is Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” one of a number of selections that warn students that there can be a dark side to invention and technology.

Freshmen at Gustavus Adolphus College, a Lutheran-affiliated school in Minnesota, are among those reading the novel this summer. In the fall, they will participate in a campuswide exploration of the ethical questions brought up by bioengineering like genome editing, genetic testing and cloning.

Image Several commonly assigned titles reflect anxiety about the internet and gaming, like “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” the journalist Jon Ronson’s take on social media mobs.

Several other commonly assigned titles reflect anxiety about the internet and gaming. Those include “The Circle,” a novel by Dave Eggers about a young woman drawn into the nefarious practices of the global tech company for which she works (chosen by Auburn University and Ohio Northern University, among others); “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” the journalist Jon Ronson’s take on social media mobs (Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, Ramapo College in New Jersey); and “Ready Player One,” a sci-fi novel by Ernest Cline in which a teenager confronts real-world social inequalities embedded within a utopian virtual reality game (Washington State).