College Reading Crisis: Why Students Can't Finish 20-Page Assignments

Compiled by the editorial desk with reference to The Chronicle of Higher Education, NAEP data, and published research studies.

When Tyler Jagt, a literature and writing instructor at a university, assigned a 20-page article to his class, he expected the kind of effort he himself had put in as an undergraduate a decade ago. Instead, not a single student completed the reading. One confessed they kept losing track of the paper's argument. Jagt's account, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, has become a focal point in a growing conversation about whether today's students are equipped for sustained academic work.

Jagt's experience is not an isolated anecdote. National data points to a systemic slide. The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading assessment, released last year, showed 12th-grade reading scores at their lowest since the test began in 1992. Nearly a third of high school seniors scored below the “basic” level, meaning they likely cannot draw general conclusions from explicit text. Younger students show similar struggles: a report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 70 percent of fourth graders—roughly two million children—read below proficient levels.

“What I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch,” Jagt writes. “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.” His words resonate with many educators who report that incoming students lack the stamina for long-form texts.

AI and Smartphones: New Factors in an Old Problem

Educators point to two technological forces reshaping student cognition: generative AI and smartphones. Many students now turn to AI tools to summarize lengthy articles they cannot finish, relying on quick responses to get through coursework. Others use the technology to generate essays or solve problems outright—a form of cheating that has become widespread. Universities partnering with tech companies to offer AI access have, in Jagt's view, inadvertently legitimized the practice, leaving individual instructors to navigate the fallout alone.

Research on AI's educational benefits is mixed at best. One of the few major studies suggesting ChatGPT improved learning was retracted last month. Other studies link AI use to impaired critical thinking and memory issues. An MIT study cited by Jagt found that students who used ChatGPT during writing tasks showed lower brain activity in areas associated with creativity compared to peers who used traditional search or no digital help. Notably, 83 percent of AI users could not quote a single line from the essays they had just written, and their brain activity did not return to normal when asked to write without AI.

Smartphones may be an even more pervasive culprit. A 2017 study showed that merely having a smartphone nearby—even face down or off—reduces cognitive capacity. Jagt connects this to his students' struggles: “So when a student tells me they ‘kept losing track’ of a 20-page article, I have to acknowledge that they may be describing a measurable neurological condition. The neural pathways that support sustained attention are built by use, and they atrophy without it.”

Instructors Left to Cope Alone

Jagt argues that the reading crisis is structural, yet universities treat it as a private burden for composition instructors and adjuncts. He has resorted to splitting the 20-page article into halves and modeling argument-tracking on the board—workarounds that, he says, compromise the text's integrity and consume class time that should be spent on higher-level skills. “When I assign analysis, I am not trying to extract a polished product; I am trying to put the student’s mind through resistance in order to make it stronger,” he writes. “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.”

As universities grapple with these challenges, the debate extends beyond reading lists. It touches on the very purpose of education in an age of instant answers and constant distraction. Whether institutions will adopt the structural overhaul Jagt calls for remains an open question.