Students are writing but don't have anything to say...?

Two researchers reporting at the annual meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication said that students “...are not selecting authoritative, meaningful sources and not reading them carefully. They are not, in a word, engaging.” 164 student research papers (with 1,832 research citations) produced in first-year composition classes were analyzed. Institutions in 12 states from diverse regions of the country, including community colleges and four-year public universities, private colleges and universities, and religiously affiliated and Ivy league institutions were represented.
"Only 9 percent of the citations were categorized as summary [ as opposed to quotes, paraphrasing or patchwriting]. 'That's the stunning part, I think: 91 percent are citations to material that isn't composing,' said Jamieson. 'They don't digest the ideas in the material cited and put it in their own words.' "
Read a fuller report of their findings in today's (April 11) Inside Higher Ed.