New Phenomenon Emerges on Campus: Many University Students Unable to Read

A serious warning is emerging from the academic world: university students’ reading and writing abilities are plummeting to a critical point. Many university lecturers are now complaining that students entering higher education are effectively unable to read and comprehend long texts, a basic skill they should have mastered before starting their studies. Tyler Jagt, a university-level literature and writing instructor, recounted his shocking experience in an essay for The Chronicle of Higher Education. He described assigning students a 20-page article to read, the same article he easily finished when he was a student a decade ago. Now, not a single student managed to complete it. One student confessed to stopping midway because they kept forgetting the plot and core discussion of the text. This issue is not merely a personal grievance from one instructor. Official data confirms this phenomenon. Results from a national assessment in 2024 showed that reading scores for 12th-grade students in the United States were at their lowest level since the assessment began in 1992. Nearly a third of 12th graders scored below the ‘basic’ standard, meaning a large portion of them cannot draw general conclusions from concepts clearly written in a text. At lower levels, the same problem is evident. An Annie E. Casey Foundation report found that 70 per cent of 4th-grade students have not achieved adequate reading proficiency. ‘What I am witnessing in the classroom is no longer mere speculation,’ Jagt wrote. ‘There is a measurable and comprehensive decline in sustained reading and writing ability across this entire generation.’ Two main factors are considered the primary causes of this crisis: the widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) and smartphones. Many students now consider AI a legitimate learning aid. They use it to summarise difficult, lengthy articles, and even to write essays and solve maths problems. Some universities are even forging partnerships with tech companies to provide students with access to AI services, which indirectly legitimises and accelerates the use of AI in the classroom. As a result, lecturers are left to bear the consequences alone when they teach. From a research perspective, the benefits of AI as an educational tool remain questionable. One major study that once claimed ChatGPT boosts learning performance was retracted last month. Most research actually points to its harmful effects, with AI use linked to weakened critical thinking skills and impaired memory. A study from MIT found that students who used ChatGPT while doing tasks like essay writing showed lower brain activity in areas associated with creativity compared to those who merely used Google or sought information independently. An even more startling fact is that 83 per cent of AI users could not cite a single sentence from the essay they had just written. Worse still, their brain activity did not return to normal even when asked to write without AI assistance afterwards. Meanwhile, mobile phones also exert a massive impact. A 2017 study showed diminished cognitive capacity and brain function in individuals in close proximity to a phone, even when the phone was switched off. ‘The human brain works on a use-it-or-lose-it principle,’ Jagt said. To help his students who were unable to engage deeply with the 20-page article, Jagt was forced to split it across several pages among several people and turn it into a group assignment.