Sure, I finished it. He went on to bemoan jobless college grads, look down on "following your dreams", and tell us that letting our hopes die is normal. We'll just get over it and quit kicking things up by the time we're 30.
This article smacks of "back in my day". Perhaps college students spend "just over one hour per day" studying alone because education has realized the benefit of group learning, interactive education and project-based classes. In the age of Wikipedia and Google the need to memorize and study in silence, as in the monastery, has decreased substantially.
David Brooks' longing for the day when students just shut up and listened to their teachers is patronizing and ignorant.