The Average College Student Is Illiterate

Students are not what they used to be. The crisis is worse than you think.

Oxford undergraduates on a late night drinking spree, 1824. By Robert Cruikshank. (Photo by Hulton Archive.) I’m Gen X. I was pretty young when I earned my PhD, so I’ve been a professor for a long time—over 30 years. If you’re not in academia, or it’s been a while since you were in college, you might not know this: the students are not what they used to be. The problem with even talking about this topic at all is the knee-jerk response of, “yeah, just another old man complaining about the kids today, the same way everyone has since Gilgamesh. Shake your fist at the clouds, dude.” So yes,…

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