Students Working | Photo by Soham Parikh | The Wright State Guardian
Are the capabilities of students to read and write really going down like many educators observe? Two English professors and a writing center employee weigh in on the English skills of recent WSU students.
Background
A viral article in The Atlantic possesses a daring headline, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” The article concerns professors noticing a decline among their students with critical thinking and reading comprehension. They are unfocused and overwhelmed by reading and discussion.
A Reboot Foundation survey concluded that:
“Given the deficits in critical thinking acquisition during school, we would hope that respondents’ critical thinking skills continued to improve after they’ve left school. But only about 55 percent reported that their critical thinking skills had improved since high school, with almost a quarter reporting that their skills had actually deteriorated since then. “
This demonstrates a level of self-awareness of a lack of critical thinking, but is it actually reflected in university academics?
WSU perspective
The National Center for Education Statistics reports another grim fact: “The average reading score for 13-year-olds was significantly lower in 2023 than in 2020, continuing a decline that began in 2012.”
Many of these teens of the early 2010s have reached university age, begging the question if they are truly ready to take on the high demand of university English courses and they have the critical thinking skill too to do so.
English Professors Barry Milligan and Erin Flanagan provide unique perspectives as long-time members of the WSU English faculty, a combined 56 years of experience between them.
Milligan teaches beginning English composition through masters-level English coursework.
“It's one thing to be a smart person who's able to read well, it's another thing to be somebody who's had a lot of experience asking certain kinds of questions and coming up with answers and evidence to support them. And I think it might be true that students now have a little less of that particular experience in their background than students have had with certain other periods,” Milligan said.
In Milligan’s 36 years of professorship, Milligan observes that the most recent batch of WSU students may not be incapable of critical thinking and academic accomplishment as much as overwhelmed with university level course loads because of other responsibilities.
“The expectations of quantity that people will read per course have definitely gone down. And I personally interpret that, or have interpreted it at the college level, as being not so much an indication of what students have done before they got here, but I tend to think of it more in terms of the increased demands students have on them now because of the cost of college,” MIlligan said. “They're usually working at least one job.”
Milligan also reflected that during their time in university, a semester’s worth of tuition was roughly $650 (est. $2,500 today), a stark difference from the students of WSU today. Overall, Milligan concludes they have not seen an overall decline in the skills of English students, but have adapted courses slightly to accommodate modern WSU students.
Professor Flanagan shares a similar sentiment. Flanagan boasts 20 years at Wright State teaching creative writing and English.
“When I started teaching, I was more concerned with mechanics,” Flanagan said. “And now I think I take a much more holistic approach to looking at a story or an essay from a student, and try to concentrate on the bigger picture rather than the smaller.”
On the topic of critical thinking, Flanagan finds students pay attention to topics that they care the most about, but may struggle to engage critically with the sheer amount of information they are presented with with the advent of the internet.
“Thinking back,” Flanagan said, “There's so many splinters in the things that we care about now, because you can go really deep into something that I've never heard of, but be like critically engaged with that, but I might not know what that thing is.”
Flanagan also concludes that reading and writing skills have remained relatively consistent with few exceptions.
Writing center employee of two years Laila Turner has a different perspective, working with students that may need the most help at WSU’s writing center.
“A major concern that's come up recently is some of the basics of English and writing in general, they just don't really understand, like they don't understand how to format a paper,” Turner said.
Some writing center students struggle with how to structure a paragraph and how to follow formatting guidelines. Turner remarks that the gap in skill continues to widen the longer they are a writing center employee. Often students remark to Turner that they have never had to read a full book in their high school careers.
Common theories for this observed deficit in academic skill include increased screen time, the COVID-19 pandemic, teacher overwork and university underfunding.
