The Kindle isn't doing as well in academic environments as Amazon—and educators—had originally hoped. The Darden Business School at the University of Virginia is near the end of its Kindle "experiment," already concluding that students are not into the Kindle when it comes to classroom learning. They are, however, fans of the Kindle when it comes to using it as a personal reading device.

Darden is one of a handful of schools that decided to give the larger-screened Kindle DX a trial run in select classes to see how well it fared in the academic environment. And, it's not the first to conclude that the Kindle isn't quite right for its students. Arizona State University recently completed its own pilot program for the Kindle DX and wasn't particularly impressed—the university also settled a lawsuit with the American Council for the Blind, agreeing to use devices that were more accessible to the blind in the future. Princeton was also underwhelmed by its Kindle test; one student described the device as a "poor excuse of an academic tool" in an interview with the Daily Princetonian.

Most Darden students seem to agree. When asked to fill out a midterm survey on whether they would recommend the Kindle DX to incoming MBA students, 75 to 80 percent answered "no," according to Darden director of MBA operations Michael Koenig. On the flip side, 90 to 95 percent answered "yes" to whether they would recommend it to an incoming student as a personal reading device.

"What that says to me is that Amazon created a very well-designed consumer device for purchasing and reading digital books, magazines and newspapers," Koenig staid in a statement. "It’s not yet ready for prime time in the highly engaged Darden business school classroom."

Despite these results, the school isn't about to write off e-book readers—it just doesn't think the Kindle is the right tool. Darden hopes to have zero waste by 2020 and did note that there were a handful of "power user" students who used the Kindle exclusively for class. Koenig said that the school is happy to offer its survey results to help Amazon identify which hardware and software tweaks might be necessary in order for the Kindle to better target higher education.

In the meantime, it's clear that e-readers are taking off in nonacademic environments. There has been a sudden surge of options available to customers in the form of the Nook, iPad, and Borders' Kobo, as well as numerous others on the verge of release. The Kindle enjoys the advantage of being one of the first major e-readers to hit the market, however, and is clearly doing well among the consumer market regardless of its academic shortcomings.