"Instead we get crap like Ragged Dick..."

Resisting.....joke...too.....easy....

I agree, totally inappropriate for the college level. Or even serious H.S. courses in the honors or A.P. vein. I imagine these books are kept on reading lists because so many students have reading and critical thinking skills years behind their chronological age. A H.S. in an affluent area will have juniors reading Paradise Lost and Moby Dick while schools in an impoverished area - well - nothing comparable.

OTOH I retain a certain fondness for Flowers For Algernon - a good way to have younger students contemplate the nature of intelligence, perception, moral reasoning and so on.