Elite colleges where students can’t cope with strain of reading an entire book: ‘My jaw dropped’
Students at prestigious colleges are finding it increasingly difficult to read entire books because they don’t have the attention span.
Some professors say they have been forced to reduce reading assignments and lower expectations to prevent students from becoming overwhelmed β even though the workload is often less intense than in previous years.
It is not that students are illiterate, they say, but rather that young people are not used to working through long texts and have difficulty concentrating for long periods of time β often due to the distraction of social media.
UC Berkeley literature professor Victoria Kahn shared The Atlantic Ocean She used to have 200 pages of reading assigned each week, but now she has had to cut this requirement in half.
A woman has difficulty concentrating on her work. Professors at top universities have noticed that their students have difficulty reading and focusing (stock image)
A TikTok video in which a woman jokes about students’ shorter attention spans
She told the outlet, βI’m not doing the whole Illiad. I assign books from The Illiad. I hope some of them will read the whole piece.
“It’s not like I can say, ‘Okay, I expect you to read The Illiad for the next three weeks,’ because they’re not going to.”
Meanwhile, Greg Wrenn, an English professor at James Madison University, wrote an alarming op-ed Al Jazeera about students with TikTok ‘addictions’ and the ‘devastating attention crisis’ it has caused.
Wrenn wrote, βIn my environmental literature classes, I have seen firsthand the long-term effects of digital cocaine like TikTok on my students.
‘I’m on a mission, probably doomed, to make them more present β ββto appreciate the written word and the natural world, sometimes wearing my wetsuit and diving mask to get their attention when we talk about coral reefs and Ralph Waldo Emerson.β
Wrenn said his students often have trouble getting through the essays or excerpts he prescribes.
He added that some had even told him they had never finished a book in their entire lives.
Another student, who wants to become a teacher, told him she spends at least six hours on TikTok every day.
βMy students are overstimulated β and depressed and exhausted β by the mainstreaming of TikTok and Instagram,β Wrenn said.
He added that he lowers his expectations for students every semester.
Nicholas Dames, a humanities professor at Columbia University, told The Atlantic that many of his students seemed bewildered at the thought of reading multiple books in a semester.
He remembers the day his jaw dropped when a student told him that she had never had to read an entire book in high school and that she was struggling with the lessons.
Students walk in front of the Columbia University library (photo). A professor from Columbia discussed the problems their students were having with reading
Professor Nicholas Dames from Columbia University, who shared his views on students’ reading skills
UC Berkley professor Victoria Khan said she is assigning less than half the reading she used to
Anthony Grafton, a Princeton historian, also told the Atlantic that his students typically arrive on campus with a more limited vocabulary than in previous years.
Some teachers have grown tired of students being unable to complete their assignments, taking to social media to air their grievances.
One TikToker, @advisorprof, posted a video ranting about students coming to class unprepared when they had only been asked to do minimal reading.
He said, βIt doesn’t really matter how many pages we assign, we used to assign 100, now we assign twenty and still half the class doesn’t read.
‘What are you thinking about? Why don’t you read? I mean, 20 to 30 pages a week really isn’t much, it’s basically nothing.
“If you sit there staring blankly at your professor when he asks you a question and you can’t answer it because you’re not prepared, don’t you feel ashamed?”
Even some self-confident students have noticed how social media has affected their attention span.
A light-hearted TikTok video posted by @veejaxp read: ‘pov: tiktok reduced your attention span so much that you use tiktoks instead of lectures to study’.
In the short clip, we see students looking up their study topics on TikTok to see if they can get a 15-second overview.
While there is no concrete data showing a rapid decline in students’ ability to read longer texts β requiring them to follow extended storylines and remember important details β there is research on declining attention spans in general.
In 2004, the average time someone could concentrate on one thing was two and a half minutes. Now it’s 45 seconds, according to Northeast Global News.
A professor posted a TikTok calling out students for coming to class unprepared and not doing the required reading
Teenagers gather in a circle on their phones. Growing up surrounded by technology has damaged attention spans (stock image)
James Madison professor Greg Wrenn wrote an article outlining his experiences with students’ declining attention spans
A TikTok allowed students to search for their study topic in 15-second videos instead of referring to their notes or lectures
The problem college professors face is also visible among younger students and is linked to a broader issue of illiteracy and lack of reading skills.
Some Generation Alpha teachers are so enraged by “wild and illiterate” students that they are leaving the profession entirely.
The damaging combination of excessive technology and the lingering effects of pandemic lockdowns has left 92 percent of U.S. public school leaders concerned that their children are not meeting academic standards, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Literacy rates among younger students are also alarmingly low.
According to a literacy report from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, two-thirds of American students in fourth through eighth grades are not proficient at reading.
The report reads: ‘Literacy β the basic ability to read β is at the heart of all other learning. If students don’t learn to read, they can’t read to learn other subjects.’
About 40 percent of students nationwide cannot read at a basic level, the National Literacy Institute reported.
Public school curricula have placed more emphasis on short texts and standardized tests than on more complex reading comprehension skills.
In recent decades, older students have simply read less. The Atlantic reported that in 1976, nearly 40 percent of high school students read at least six books in a year and less than 12 percent read none. In 2022, those percentages were reversed.
Two phones loading TikTok. One student admitted to her professor that she spends six hours a day on the app (stock image)
Under a Reddit post of the article in The Atlantic, more than 70 commenters chimed in to discuss the issue.
One user wrote: ‘I work in education and can confirm every word of this anecdotally, but god it’s depressing to see the trend has spread on such a wide scale. The slow death of book culture and the disappearance of a literate audience are painful to watch.’
Another said learning this “made me feel better about going to community college,” because even top students struggle with reading comprehension.
DailMail.com has contacted Columbia University, James Madison University and UC Berkley for comment.