'My college students can't read'
- Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 3
- 2 min read
My college students can't read, writes Tyler Jagt in The Chronicle of Higher Education. They can't stay focused long enough to read a 20-page article.
He's taught literature, rhetoric and writing at Mercer University, James Madison University and Wake Forest. "There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires," Jagt writes.
The 2024 NAEP results show 12th-grade reading scores at the lowest level since 1992, Jagt notes. "We are admitting a cohort that cannot read at a college level and are pretending otherwise."
His students grew up with smartphones, and now rely on AI, he writes. It's bad for their brains. "Offloading the struggle to a chatbot does not 'free students up for higher-order work'.” It deprives them of building the strength to do any substantial cognitive work at all."
The brain is a "use-it-or-lose-it system," he writes. "The neural pathways that support sustained attention are built by use, and they atrophy without it."
Jagt also blames Common Core-influenced reading instruction, which encourages teachers to assign short passages rather than asking students to do sustained reading. As Natalie Wexler points out, "students drilled on finding the main idea' in two-paragraph excerpts never build the stamina or background knowledge that long-form reading requires."
And, of course, the pandemic made it worse.
Some of his students come from schools that taught sustained reading, enforced strict phone policies and didn't teach to the test, writes Jagt. They are able to pay attention. Most are not.
Like professors teaching middle-school math to prospective STEM majors, Jagt is trying to teach middle and high school reading and study skills to college students. He breaks 20-page articles into halves, and assigns "explicit analytical tasks." He teaches "how to track an argument across pages or distinguish a source’s claim from my own analysis." He shows students how to take notes.
And he wonders: "If a majority of incoming students cannot read at a level the curriculum requires, are we admitting students we cannot serve, or offering a curriculum we cannot provide?"
He doesn't have a solution.
I've always liked reading but you are correct in that what students learn to master in elementary school pretty much will shape the opportunities they have access to in adulthood...
When students show up to college with only middle school knowledge (or less), they didn't get the foundation education that elementary school provided when we attended...
More than likely these students were socially promoted even if they hadn't mastered the subject in question...
End result is that students were given high school diplomas that were not earned (and as young adults they will pay for it in lost opportunities for many years to come, especially with the advent of AI in the workplace).
The solution is not complex, although it may require some political courage: save taxpayers money by requiring a baccalaureate student examination as a qualification for admission to state-subsidized universities, and force the unqualified into the private educational finance market, where the higher risk of lending them money should be reflected in the interest rates they will have to pay -- this is the policy of nearly every developed state in the world, and would likely shrink America's bloated higher education market, which is experiencing unavoidable shrinking, given our baby bust and currently restrictive policy towards immigration.
Mr McFadden got us reading in fifth grade. He made it a semester-long project and a contest. He put up a big chart on the wall with all of our names down the side and categories across the top, such as biography, science, geography, etc. You had to read one book from each category (there were ten) and write a book report about it and you got a star in that column. Book reports were just a one-page form where you answered some questions about the book and wrote about a three or four paragraph description of the book (they were graded pass-fail). After the first ten mandatory books, you got another star for every additional ten books o…
Why aren't states drafting legislation which determines standards for entry to state run colleges and universities is what I want to know...
Private universities and colleges are free to do what they like...
The way to stop this is simple... Require every newly admitted student directly from high school to take a placement exam in reading, writing and math...
If the results show that math, reading or writing skills are middle school or below, the applicant isn't allowed to attend and is recommended to attend Sylvan, Kumon or other tutoring to get their skills to at least the 11th/12th grade level...
At least that way, the student has a good chance of making it through the 1st semester or year…
A corollary of
What is taught on the college campuses of one generation is the philosophy of the k12 teachers of the next.
The teachers and administrators of the schools who "taught" these students prior to them arriving on college campuses were themselves college edu-medicated in prior decades. Education changes slowly as the old fuddy-duddy teachers using the old ways need to retire out. But now the new, modern teaching ideas remain with the younger teachers. Then there are no alternative examples to inform the students they are being miseducated.
On the upside, home/alternative schooling is easier than ever so those who…