America’s Schools Sent Gen Z to College Unable to Read
“Even when you read it in class with them, there’s so much they can’t process about the very words that are on the page.”
A growing number of college professors are warning that Gen Z students are arriving on campus unable to read at even a basic level, forcing universities to lower standards while pretending nothing is wrong quietly.
According to a report by Fortune, professors across the country are encountering students who cannot process written sentences, complete assigned reading, or engage meaningfully with texts that were once considered foundational to higher education. The problem is not limited to elite institutions or remedial courses. It is widespread, structural, and accelerating.
One professor described the situation in stark terms.
“It’s not even an inability to critically think,” Jessica Hooten Wilson, a professor of great books and humanities at Pepperdine University, told Fortune. “It’s an inability to read sentences.”
Wilson said students routinely arrive having skipped assigned reading entirely, leaving faculty to read texts aloud in class and walk through passages word by word.
“I feel like I am tap dancing and having to read things aloud because there’s no way that anyone read it the night before,” she said. “Even when you read it in class with them, there’s so much they can’t process about the very words that are on the page.”
The issue is unfolding against a broader collapse in reading nationwide. Nearly half of Americans did not read a single book in 2025, with reading habits declining roughly 40 percent over the past decade. Among adults aged 18 to 29, the average number of books read last year was just 5.8, according to YouGov, a figure that trails every other generation.
Rather than confront the root cause, universities are adapting around it.
Wilson said she has shifted to repeated readings of short texts across an entire semester, not to lower standards, but to compensate for students’ missing foundational skills.
“I’m not trying to lower my standards. I just have to have different pedagogical approaches to accomplish the same goal,” she said.
Other professors echoed similar concerns. Timothy O’Malley of the University of Notre Dame noted that when assigned traditional reading loads, many students simply do not know how to proceed and instead rely on AI-generated summaries.
“Today, if you assign that amount of reading, they often don’t know what to do,” O’Malley told Fortune.
The consequences extend beyond academics. Wilson warned that declining literacy fuels anxiety, isolation, and social fragmentation.
“I think losing that polarization, anxiety, loneliness, a lack of friendship, all of these things happen when you don’t have a society that reads together.”
This is not a college problem. It is the predictable result of a K–12 system that fails to ensure basic competence in its students. Standards were lowered, accountability disappeared, and reading became optional. When schools prioritize accommodation and affirmation over mastery, they produce graduates who are unprepared for real work, real expectations, and the responsibilities of adulthood.
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Sent that way on purpose too. The uneducated eventually cling to destructive radical ideas to get what they want. Today’s Democrat party is lining itself up to accept these people and put them to good use.
At least every boy knows he can be a girl!
At least every girl knows she can be a boy!
At least every child knows everyone is better off with communism!
Seems to be the pattern
What else can an uneducated college grad do? There are only so many barista jobs available at Starbucks.
The dismal state of American education has not occurred by accident. It was designed to provide business and industry with an excuse to hire foreigners in place of Americans. The H-1B paradigm expanded. We have already seen Trump renege on his original promises to end the H-1B program. He also wants to double the number Chinese students in American universities. No doubt industry tells him we don’t have enough qualified Americans. Let’s reform K-12 education. We don’t need half our graduates going on to universities. At one time people came out of high school knowing a lot compared to today.
The way it used to be. Take a look at a 1912 Bullitt County 8th Grade history exam.
https://bullittcountyhistory.org/bchistory/schoolexam1912.html
I might point out that part of the problem is the expectation that everyone must go to college, else you won’t succeed.
The guy I worked for previously went straight from HS to slinging coffee at Dunkin. He’s now on his fourth business and worth well north of $100m.
While we certainly need to improve the performance of public schools (*cough* decertify unions *cough*) there are simply too many people going to college.
Exactly this. 80% of the people enrolled in college really shouldn’t be there (Pareto Principle in action).
An expectation coupled with the dismantling and debasement of vocational education, despite the aptitudes of a large portion of the student body,
They can’t understand what they’re reading. They’re reading the words, but failing at comprehension.
They can’t put ideas together.
This isn’t about college.
This is horrifying.
An excerpt from the essay “The Decline of Education” by Robert Heinlein, reprinted in _Expanded Universe_ nearly fifty years ago:
The above looks middlin’ good on the surface. College requirements from high school have been watered down somewhat (or more than somewhat) but that B+ average as a requirement looks good … if high schools are teaching what they taught two and three generations ago. The rules limit admission to the upper 8% of California high school graduates (out-of-state applicants must meet slightly higher requirements).
8% – So 92% fall by the wayside. These 8% are the intellectual elite of young adults of the biggest, richest, and most lavishly educated state in the Union.
Those examinations for the English-composition requirement: How can anyone fail who has had 3 years of high school English and averages B+ across the board?
If he fails to qualify, he may enter but must take at once (no credit) “Subject A” – better known as “Bonehead English.”
“Bonehead English” must be repeated, if necessary, until passed. To be forced to take this no-credit course does not mean that the victim splits an occasional infinitive, sometimes has a dangling modifier, or a failure in agreement or case – he can even get away with such atrocities as ” – like I say – .”
It means that he has reached the Groves of Academe unable to express himself by writing in the English language.
It means that his command of his native language does not equal that of a 12-year-old country grammar school graduate of ninety years ago. It means that he verges on subliterate but that his record is such in other ways that the University will tutor him (no credit and for a fee) rather than turn him away.
I’ve long thought that every remedial class should be funded by the school district that handed that person a diploma coupled with a reporting requirement to ID what # and % of those the district handed a HS diploma were unprepared for Eng 101 or College Algebra. Then hammer the school district with Federal funding cuts based on the %.
Absolutely send back to the district that “educated” not this person. UNTIL the people responsible for this massive failure, nothing will change.
I’ve thought this for years – agree 100%
Charging it back to the school district wont help – its still a cost to the taxpayer.
Better to charge it back to the people that benefit from the industrial education complex. All the teachers, administrators and other grifters in the system.
I’m going further down the totem pole.
If a teacher passes a kid who cannot meet grade requirements, the money to keep the kid same grade level or into a remedial class comes out of the teacher’s salary.
Teacher unions always talk about a lack of money for their salaries. Higher salaries should mean more production in the real world. Not less.
Hit them where they live.
Harvard has a remedial math class that has become a such a fixture for all incoming students that it is now labelled as a first year math class. Remember when we all started with pre-calculus/calculus in our first semester, first year?
Well now Harvard starts with Algebra 1, a ninth grade course, for most students.
I homeschooled our children. By the time each child was in sixth grade, algebra was our math curriculum. Not pre-algebra, algebra. Calculus started freshman year.
Harvard has become a complete joke, costing $400k. A joke with no laughter.
“ Remember when we all started with pre-calculus/calculus in our first semester, first year?”
No. But then again I never attended Harvard.
I was horrified to learn recently that graphic novels are a real thing taken seriously. Apparently too weighty and erudite for today’s social justice warriors, Donald Westlake’s short, simple Parker heist novels have been “reimagined” with cartoons and very large print.
Soon – The Brothers Karamazov to be released as K Bros Get Down.
But I’ll bet they know the importance of Earth day and avoiding fossil fuels.
But do they know they’re celebrating Vladimir Lenin’s birthday on “Earth Day”?
“Who???”
Hey, go easy on them. They’re still reeling from just having been told about Christmas
We are not the country or culture that we once were. Both for technological reasons [audio-visual means of communications being the norm] and cultural reasons we do not value either literacy or basic arithmetical [not math, basic 2 + 2 type calculations] competency.
Long ago when the world was new my [deliberately assimilating immigrant] father was pleased and proud when I taught myself basic reading between kindergarten and first grade. Until I could get there myself, he made sure that I could visit the library at least weekly. Today, how many parents take such interest in their child learning to read and reading regularly on their own? Not many. Thus, it is no surprise that we have generations that are functionally cut off from the knowledge and literature of the past. This is going to come back to haunt us.
Subotai Bahadur
Bottom line, a nation once known for its education system and providing basic education to all, has failed miserably.
These students were cheated. Unfortunately they will pay in more ways than one less THEY FIX IT THEMSELVES. No one can fix this problem for them – no one.
American Federation of Teachers changed “No child left behind” to “No teacher left behind”
I’ll get downticks for this, but I’m going to say it anyway: the teachers union is there to be a union for the teachers. The students have absolutely nothing to do with their being.
The same thing is true of the United auto workers union. They’re not there to assemble automobiles properly. The union is there to represent the union workers and let them get away with his little as possible.
And like most unions, they promote working conditions that disincentivize doing anything but the bare minimum. The “graduates” of these bureaucracies reflect that.
Did you really mean little, or much?
Good thing we have a National Department of Education and an American Federation of Teachers. Just imagine how bad things would be without their tireless and noble efforts.
BINGO Farm guy!
Union teachers don’t have to do a good job and they know it.
And there’s nothing we’re going to do about it. A GOOD teacher is worth twice what a mediocre teacher is but, because of unions, their pay is all according to scale.
Charter schools, if the unions leave them alone, can make a difference.
“The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”
The goal of government schools is never education.
The goal of government schools is indoctrination.
It’s not only reading, as Harvard has discovered. It’s basic arithmetic (that’s not math). When I run into adults over the years who say, “I can’t do math” they mean they cannot do arithmetic.
I then ask them how good their 5th (sometimes 4th) grade teacher was, were. To a person, at least one was bad and when it’s 5th grade and arithmetic, they are handicapped coming across anything with numbers.
You see, 5th grade arithmetic teaches the ability to go from fractions to decimals and back. This becomes impossible if one has not learned (memorized – heaven forbid) the times tables through 12 x 12. Why 12 x 12 and not 10 x 10? We deal with feet (12) and inches.
Conducting memorization drills is too boring and menial for our unionized “educators”.
“When I run into adults over the years who say, “I can’t do math” they mean they cannot do arithmetic.”
More to the point, they cannot even make change without a cash register to tell them..
The right abandoned public education to the leftists. It’s not going to change, it’s not going to improve until the leftists are driven out.
Colleges of “education” are legendary for having among the lowest SAT/ACT scores on campus.
Due to too many teachers who were, themselves, weak in math, I and many of my class mates had problems with algebra. To graduate high school with anything other than a general academic diploma, I had to retake Algebra 1 in summer school. For that two months of half-day classes, I learned more than I did the entire ninth grade.
If the teachers don’t (1) know the subject and (2) care about emparting knowledge to their students, then those students will be handicapped for the rest of their lives. This I know.
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OTOH, reading has always been a major interest and still is. History, historical fiction, biographies and autobiographies, science fiction (not to include the goofy fantasy that too often fascinates modern youth) have all been interesting. The reasons for the joy of reading are several but what’s most fun is the ability to set scenes in my head. Funny – movies made from books just don’t seem to show things as my mind’s eye did.
Thank you, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and so many others who fascinated this kid.
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For me to understand, algebra, it took an instructor at Portland community college to get through to me. Funny thing is he didn’t have a degree in education. He had a doctorate in physics and a couple of other Fields. He taught night school as a part-time gig.
Absolutely. I’ve been saying this for years – teachers that are phobic about math or say they “hate” math often pass that phobia/hatred on to their students.
Part of the reason this happens is because public schools place greater importance on certification than they do on qualification. A 23- year old fresh college graduate with the silly teacher cert will get hired over the next Newton or Euler who hasn’t gone through the brainwashing to get the cert.
States in the deep south made fixing ed a priority and it’s showing.
Mississippi is taking care of business.
Tennessee has really put a fine point on getting metrics on rural areas which are typically very poverty ridden and have had historically abysmal ed performance. The south will rise.
The young students are the best guinea pigs. The drive by “educators” went sideways when the Social Emotional Learning thesis was shoved through the school systems at our governments behest. Likely because there were too many folks that rebelled against the nerds and we needed more idol worship. Balance is not taught because too many educators had to back down and the unions recognized that an emotionally based populace was easier to sway. We don’t ,t need no critical thinking, we just need acolytes.
Think it’s bad now?
Take a look at TikTok, et al, where teachers are quitting in droves due to Gen Alpha being damn near uneducable.
This is how we get a Jasmine Crockett in Congress. Dumbasses talking to dumbasses.
We Baby Boomers sent thousands who cannot read to college. We called them “football players”.
With many universities football is a lot more important than offering an education.
Because you can place bets on college football/basketball etc games.
The universities don’t give a damn what happens once the students graduate, and they sure as hell don’t care whether or not their graduates are gainfully employed.
Yes, but to be brutally fair, even knowing we did that, we still elected many of them to Congress later.
The headline should change from “unable” to “unwilling.”
I’m sorry, if you can’t read you simply do not belong in college and should never have been accepted..
How do you plan on keeping the doors open if you don’t have students?
I agree with your point, but education is about money. Not learning, teaching and comprehending.
If you don’t have butts in the seats, the college closes.
A news station in Baltimore runs a series called “Project Baltimore” which looks at the state of education in the City.
It is horrifying.
Last year only 5% of secondary students were at grade level for math and English.
One high school that was considered an “elite” school had no kids at grade level. One student that was about to graduate had passed one course in his four years of high school. One.
He had even failed gym and an art class.
Yet he was about to graduate.
The problem is complex. First we have teachers who don’t care. They want to pass kids on.
Secondly, we have teacher’s unions that protect bad teachers.
Third, we have unions that want parent participation, but then tell parents only teachers know what and how to teach. (After all, parents never teach their kids anything in real life.)
Fourth, too often parents aren’t involved in their kid’s education. They don’t know what the child is doing and don’t care. They don’t know what quizzes and tests the child passes or fails. Personally, I believe this is a result of many single parent homes. Still, parent / teacher conferences have one or two parents show up and the rest are home watching “Survivor” while their kid doesn’t do homework.
Fifth, the kids don’t care. Why should they? The teachers don’t care. The Administration doesn’t care. The parents don’t care. Why should the kids? They would rather be playing games and on their phones than actually learning anything.
The system needs to be burned to the ground.
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