Gen Z Students Can’t Read Basic Sentences: Study
Artificial intelligence is a real page turner.
According to professors at multiple top universities, students’ overreliance on AI has caused the average Gen Zer to struggle with basic reading and comprehension.
“It’s not even an inability to critically think,” Jessica Hooten Wilson, a humanities professor at Pepperdine University, told Fortune. “It’s an inability to read sentences.”
“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 added. “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.”
Her remarks follow data published by technology firm Aithor showing that “almost 80% of Gen Z professionals (ages 18-21) use AI tools for over half of their work tasks.”
“40% of Gen Zs use AI at least once a week vs 50% of Boomers do not use AI at all,” Aithor found.
On college campuses, students are struggling to comprehend long-form passages, suggesting a decline in attention spans.
“With students struggling, academics have been forced to adapt—a move critics describe as ‘coddling,’” Fortune noted.
To keep students engaged, Wilson requires they read passages aloud together and discuss them line by line. Amid the rise of AI and emerging technology, she wants students to improve their reading comprehension skills to prepare for their post-graduate career, the outlet wrote.
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As noted by Campus Reform, “the projected decreasing quality of student work has resulted in significant grade inflation, including at the nation’s elite universities.”
For example, an internal review at Harvard University found widespread grade inflation, blurring the lines between truly excellence vs. average academic performance.
The internal audit revealed “more than 60 percent of grades awarded to Harvard undergraduates are A’s, compared to only a quarter of grades two decades ago, according to The Harvard Crimson.
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