A growing number of college professors are sounding the alarm over a quiet but accelerating crisis on American campuses, as Gen Z students are arriving at universities unable to read at even a basic level.
According to a report by Fortune, professors across the country say students are struggling to process written sentences, complete assigned reading, or engage meaningfully with texts that were once foundational to higher education.
The problem is not confined to remedial courses or underperforming schools.
Faculty say it is widespread, structural, and getting worse.
Jessica Hooten Wilson, a professor of great books and humanities at Pepperdine University, told the outlet:
“It’s not even an inability to critically think.
“It’s an inability to read sentences.”
Wilson told Fortune that many students routinely arrive at class having skipped assigned reading altogether, forcing instructors to read texts aloud and walk through passages word by word.
“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 said.
“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.”
The classroom breakdown reflects a broader collapse in reading nationwide.
Nearly half of Americans did not read a single book in 2025, and reading habits have declined roughly 40 percent over the past decade.
Among adults aged 18 to 29, the average number of books read last year was just 5.8, fewer than any other generation.
However, rather than confronting the root problem, many universities are quietly adapting around it.
Wilson said she now relies on repeated readings of short texts over an entire semester, not to water down expectations, but to compensate for missing foundational skills.
“I’m not trying to lower my standards,” she explained.
“I just have to have different pedagogical approaches to accomplish the same goal.”
Other faculty members report similar experiences.
Timothy O’Malley of the University of Notre Dame said students often have no idea how to approach traditional reading assignments and instead turn to artificial intelligence tools for summaries.
“Today, if you assign that amount of reading, they often don’t know what to do,” O’Malley told Fortune.
The consequences extend beyond academics.
Wilson warned that declining literacy is fueling anxiety, isolation, and social fragmentation.
“I think losing that — polarization, anxiety, loneliness, a lack of friendship — all of these things happen when you don’t have a society that reads together,” she said.
Yet, this is not simply a higher education problem.
Professors say it is the predictable outcome of a K–12 system that no longer ensures basic competence.
Standards were lowered, accountability eroded, and reading increasingly treated as optional.
The result is a generation arriving at adulthood unprepared for rigorous work, real expectations, and the responsibilities that come with them, and universities now face the consequences.
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