The College Student Who Reads Like a 10-Year-Old Is Not a Joke. It Is a Warning Siren.

 

The real education crisis isn't school dropouts—it's college graduates who cannot think without AI, yet still collect degrees that fool employers and society.

Let's stop pretending this is another grumpy professor whining that "students aren't what they used to be." That excuse has expired. The evidence has kicked the classroom door open. We are producing graduates with expensive degrees and bargain-basement skills. Some college students are testing no better than 10-year-olds in reading and mathematics, yet universities continue marching them across commencement stages like nothing is burning. If that does not scare you, your standards have already flatlined.

The rot is no longer hiding in the basement. It has moved into the penthouse. More than 1,800 mathematics and science lecturers across the University of California sounded the alarm after watching first-year students stumble into calculus classes carrying mathematical skills that should have been mastered years earlier. At Berkeley, about 20%–30% of students entering introductory calculus showed severe preparation deficits. Imagine paying university tuition only to be retaught middle-school mathematics. That is like buying a first-class airline ticket and ending up on a school bus.

The disease spread even further at the University of California, San Diego. Faculty reported that the number of incoming students with mathematics skills below high-school level exploded almost 30-fold within just 5 years. Even worse, about 70% of those struggling students were performing below the level expected of a typical 14-year-old. That is not an academic hiccup. That is educational bankruptcy wearing a graduation gown.

Then came the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a club of mostly wealthy countries, armed with numbers that poured gasoline on an already raging fire. Across developed countries, about 8% of students enrolled in colleges and universities scored in literacy no better than what would normally be expected from children finishing primary school. Numeracy looked just as ugly. America's report card was even harder to swallow. About 1 in 7 tertiary students performed at or below primary-school level in literacy, while almost 1 in 5 landed there in numeracy. When college students struggle with work that many 10-year-olds should eventually master, somebody has been selling academic snake oil.

This mess did not fall from the sky. COVID-19 certainly battered education, but blaming everything on the pandemic is like blaming the last raindrop for the flood. Learning was already sliding downhill before lockdowns arrived. National assessments in the United States had been drifting downward for years. International assessments showed similar declines across several developed countries. COVID simply exposed a crack that had already become a canyon.

Meanwhile, another thief quietly robbed classrooms every single day. His name was Screen Time. Books lost the fight to smartphones. Deep reading lost the fight to endless scrolling. Attention spans became shorter than microwave instructions. According to the available published  evidence, nearly 60% of American 9-year-olds read books for pleasure during the 1990s. Today that figure has dropped to 37%. You cannot starve your brain for years and expect it to sprint through Shakespeare, calculus, chemistry, constitutional law, or engineering. The brain is not a miracle worker. Feed it junk, and eventually it thinks like junk.

Reading has become the gym membership people buy but never use. Everyone likes owning books. Fewer people like opening them. Many students can binge-watch an entire television series without blinking but panic when handed a 40-page chapter. They sprint through TikTok videos but crawl through a textbook. Universities now report students struggling to complete readings that earlier classes handled with little drama. Harvard professors have even shortened reading assignments because many students arrive unable to sustain concentration on complex texts. Imagine entering one of the world's elite universities only to discover that the books have been trimmed because students cannot stomach them. The appetizer has replaced the meal.

Then universities decided to play another dangerous game. They dismantled many standardized admissions tests while simultaneously trusting inflated high-school grades, polished application essays, and glowing recommendations. Unfortunately, grades became puffed up like cheap bread, essays could suddenly be manufactured by artificial intelligence, and admissions officers were left guessing who could actually think. One Berkeley professor described the admissions process as a "black box." That is a polite way of saying universities are flying blind while pretending the instruments still work.

The comedy becomes darker when you examine grading itself. Yale reported that 79% of grades awarded during the 2022–2023 academic year were A or A-. Britain tells a similar story. In 1995, only 7% of bachelor's students graduated with first-class honors. By 2025, that figure had climbed to 30%. Either humanity suddenly became four times smarter, or somebody quietly lowered the basketball rim. I know which explanation I would bet my paycheck on.

Then artificial intelligence walked into the classroom carrying a blowtorch. AI is not the villain. Dishonesty is. Yet the temptation has become irresistible for many students. According to The Economist  news magazine, approximately 94% of undergraduates surveyed in Britain admitted using AI to help with assessed work, while 12% openly confessed to submitting AI-generated text directly. Researchers studying American public universities found widespread AI use and concluded that actual cheating rates were probably even higher than reported. Cheating has traded handwritten crib sheets for silicon brains. The old cheat whispered answers behind your back. The new cheat writes your essay before breakfast.

The result is painfully simple. Students can now earn grades that no longer reflect what they know. Employers hire graduates believing they possess certain skills. Hospitals assume nurses can calculate medication dosages. Businesses assume accountants understand numbers. Courts assume lawyers can reason. Schools assume teachers can teach. Somewhere along that chain, reality eventually sends the invoice. Degrees cannot replace competence any more than a driver's license can replace knowing how to steer.

I refuse to pretend that every struggling student is lazy. Many are victims of weak schools, fractured homes, poverty, or systems that failed them long before they reached college. But sympathy should never become counterfeit currency. Calling an unprepared student "college-ready" does not prepare the student. It merely postpones the collision. You can repaint a cracked wall, but the foundation still sinks.

The greatest danger is not that some students struggle. Students have always struggled. The greatest danger is that institutions appear increasingly willing to redefine struggling as succeeding. Standards quietly shrink. Exams become easier. Reading lists become shorter. Grades climb higher. Diplomas multiply. Skills disappear. Everybody smiles until reality crashes the party.

There is an old saying that lipstick cannot make a pig a beauty queen. The same is true of higher education. You can inflate grades, eliminate admissions tests, shorten reading lists, excuse cheating, and decorate transcripts with shiny letters. None of that changes what graduates actually know. A diploma is not magic. It is supposed to certify competence. Once universities begin certifying hope instead of ability, they stop producing graduates and start manufacturing expensive illusions.

That is why this crisis should terrify every parent, employer, taxpayer, and student. When some college students read, write, calculate, and reason no better than children who have barely entered adolescence, the problem is no longer inside the classroom. It has escaped into society. And society, unlike the university, does not award A-grades for good intentions.

 

If you’re looking for something different to read, some of the titles in my “Brief Book Series” is available on Google Play Books. You can also read them here on Google Play, or in Barnes & Noble bookstore: Brief Book Series.