Colleges across the country are not just facing funding cuts to their funding and decreasing enrollment, but a new and concerning trend is brewing when it comes to literacy.
Professors are finding that the students enrolling with severely limited reading abilities, according to Fortune. At some schools, teachers have adjusted their standards, whether in decreasing the size of readings for students and changing assignments to be less challenging overall.
“It’s not even an inability to critically think. It’s an inability to read sentences,” claimed Jessica Hooten Wilson, a professor at Pepperdine University, in Fortune. “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.”
The dearth of Americans reading books could be a contributor. In 2025, only 40 percent of Americans read at least one book, and that number dwindled for every additional book read. But there’s a chance that even with BookTok — a “section” of TikTok for book lovers — Gen Z might be lagging behind reading rates of older generations. Data, however, paints a mixed picture on if they’re reading less than other generations.
Some blame Gen Z’s stunted reading skills on dwindling confidence, like Brooke Vuckovic, a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, who says she’s seen this in her business school students. Each quarter, she witnesses up to half her students say they’re reluctant or novice readers. Once they’re encouraged though, she told Fortune, there’s a nearly immediate change.
Other educators think the problem starts early, when reading is framed as something required for standardized testing rather than something necessary for learning or a pleasurable hobby. Sure, it’s helpful to know how to scan text, University of Notre Dame professor Timothy O’Malley told Fortune, but that doesn’t help with critical thinking. Growing up with technology that can read out loud for you doesn’t help either, especially if nobody is actively teaching reading.
Gen Z is starting to talk about this though. For example, 24-year-old streamer Kai Cenat has spoke about his own reading on stream, potentially influencing his young fan base’s reading habits. The future of literacy numbers going back to some equilibrium is uncertain, but professors stress their importance.
O’Malley told Fortune that “polarization, anxiety, loneliness, [and] a lack of friendship” are all things that happen “when you don’t have a society that reads together.”