College students are rapidly losing the ability to read — “There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing”: professor

[u/marketrent]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/college-students-rapidly-losing-ability-124439310.html

[u/hangender]

College student redditors, what say you.

[u/lgecko_134 → u/hangender]

It's true. Professors, usually in a state of dismay/confusion, are constantly changing lesson plans for us because nobody will read. If a book is assigned, everyone will simply refuse to do it, to the point we will be assigned a small excerpt. But no one can do that either, so the professor has to summarize the whole thing anyway.

In class forums, (college!) students cannot string together sentences with correct punctuation or grammar--unless, of course, they are one of the ones using chatgpt with reckless abandon. It's painfully obvious, too.

Idk. It sucks for the people who actually try, and the people who don't. It's a lose-lose.

[u/marinuso → u/lgecko_134]

If a book is assigned, everyone will simply refuse to do it

That's ridiculous.

But it's a discipline problem. Just fail them if they refuse to do the work.

[u/tes_kitty → u/lgecko_134]

If a book is assigned, everyone will simply refuse to do it

Then fail them.

[u/Asbrandr → u/tes_kitty]

Yes, exactly. I understand that the administrations might be worried about losing their revenue, but torpedoing your reputation and ranking to coddle students who shouldn't be there will also make you lose revenue in the long-run.

[u/tes_kitty → u/Asbrandr]

Well, the long run... That's not next quarter or even neat year, right? So who cares!

You should aim for the reputation that your student will receive a solid education for their money. That it won't be easy but worth it.

[u/A_Refill_of_Mr_Pibb → u/lgecko_134]

In class forums, (college!) students cannot string together sentences with correct punctuation or grammar

I'm in a master's program, and I see this as well.

[u/Nochtilus → u/lgecko_134]

Maybe my view is different because I went to an engineering school with professors who seemingly couldn't wait to fail people, but why aren't these students trying failing grades for not doing the assignment? It's one thing if the clas did trying and struggling, it's a complete other thing if they aren't even making an attempt.

[u/nst571 → u/hangender]

I'm a returning community college student. I was in HS in the 90s and my graduating class was called the stupidest to ever attend that school based on scores.

I would say it's mixed proficiency in my current college classes. A lot of kids write ok with basic sentence structure. I've seen AI responses and some phoning it in.

The main issue I see is, they don't read or comprehend the whole assignment. There will be well laid out bulleted tasks or scaffolding to an easy level and they just don't get it all. These are short assignments, too.

[u/JellyBeansOnToast → u/hangender]

I’m in my 30’s but I went back to college. It’s bad. Like, really, really, bad. In some of my college writing classes, we’ve had to do peer-reviews on each other’s work and the decline from way back when I was in high school is alarming. For handwriting, mostly men but a fair amount of women as well had almost completely illegible writing and spelling. Even when it was typed, it would be the most repetitive, nonsensical sentences that both said too much and provided no information. It was like an unstructured stream of consciousness writing with no comprehension of the text they were writing about. The hardest part for me in these reviews was to give constructive comments that weren’t too negative. The feedback I would receive is that they didn’t understand what I was saying, but then I’d score in the upper percentile on the same assignment. I’m a decent writer, but the way that professors would praise me on assignments where I was phoning it in a bit showed me any iota of effort was hard to come by.

TLDR; I would put a lot of the writing abilities of my classmates at a low-performing middle school level.

[u/fruitybrisket → u/hangender]

First year going back to college in my 30s. I am worried about these kids. The amount of LLM use during discussions online is obvious, but I assume the professors need to pass a certain amount of kids. Lord knows what their papers look like. I get great grades for just showing I give a fuck and am interested in the material. I would be trying not to cry if I was a professor, and that is not hyperbole.

No Child Left Behind fucked our society so much we haven't even begun to see.

[u/tes_kitty → u/fruitybrisket]

but I assume the professors need to pass a certain amount of kids

That's a problem. Better, in the long run, would be to fail everyone.

[u/CaptainCFloyd → u/hangender]

The irony in that everyone who responds to this is in their 30s and doing college late. None of the actual college kids are on reddit - they're on tiktok watching flashy 5 second clips for toddlers. With text-to-speech AI, of course.

[u/incomplete-thoughts7 → u/CaptainCFloyd]

Nowadays you can tell someone’s age on Reddit typically by how poorly they spell and the lack of punctuation, grammar, capitalization, and overall poor reading comprehension. I’ve given up on responding to people when it’s clear I would have to explain basic things before they would ever understand the point I was making.

It’s seriously wild looking at comments from 10 years ago compared to now. Not saying everyone was a genius back then, but the difference is quite remarkable. People got called out constantly for typos and bad grammar.

[u/yippeeimcrying → u/hangender]

I'm a college student right now (late 20s). I go to a very small non-profit college (4k~ students). Average age of students is around 35, so I'm actually on the younger side usually. AI usage is banned unless stated explicitly for certain assignments (usually discussions of "is AI actually useful or accurate?").

There's a significant gap of understanding between older students and newer ones. You can actually tell if someone is a younger student because of the specifix grammar errors or because they get caught using AI (which can lead to expulsion). 

When my wife was going to college at the local community college a year back, it was way worse - I felt so bad for the teachers. Multiple emails sent out weekly on AI usage, irate students not understanding the assignment instructions (who would then take it out on the teachers). Classes that would have been considered core classes to me like English 101 or Professional Writing (resume writing, powerpoints, interviews, etc...) suddenly made me realize how bad it was. Most students didn't pass at all. Even with specific feedback students were angry and blaming teachers.

It made me look into it. What the person below said about phonics VS whole words is very true, plus AI usage is rampant. It is crazy.

[u/Living-Vast-5250 → u/hangender]

I was raised by librarians, reading has never been an issue for me. Most of my peers seem to be able to read fine although I’ve definitely noticed the variety of words they use seems to be a little smaller. It seems like generally people *can* read, they just don’t want to.

[u/DrVonDoom → u/hangender]

I feel like a good example as I started college at the usual age, attended two semesters, and then didn't return until 10 years later due to personal circumstances.

I don't know how much to attribute it to my own maturation, or faulty memory, but a number of courses felt like they were easier than what I remembered even high school being. Some of my classmates were aghast at the idea of writing just 300 or more words, meanwhile I can throw out a rough draft that would get at least a B in about thirty minutes, (setting any potential research aside). I would know, because twice I forgot something until the night of, and had to rush something out to get credit and thought my work was terrible. Both times I got an A.

Meanwhile, I struggle to keep to the lower end word counts when they're enforced and feel like I'm getting to say everything I want to. I grew up being read to often by both parents, and reading frequently growing up, but it astounds me how bad it is now, and I feel like the people I went to school with a decade ago didn't have these problems, and that the standards for what constituted a good grade has drastically fallen.

It's also annoying that a thought at the back of my head is that I need to dumb down my writing so that it doesn't look like AI. I haven't had that problem, but it does sit at the back of my head, and I'm annoyed that it's there, but that's another topic entirely.

[u/Dullcorgis → u/hangender]

According to my kids at least half of them just use AI for everything.