Jessica Wilson, professor of great books and humanities at Pepperdine University in California, recently told Fortune that she has also noticed an "inability to critically think."
"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 shared. "There's so much they can't process about the very words that are on the page."
Professors at the University of Notre Dame, Columbia University, and the University of Virginia have similar frustrations.
Experts tell The College Fix the crisis stems from a mix of pandemic disruptions, the abandonment of standardized testing, poor teaching methods, and a focus on equity over excellence.
Associate Editor Matt Lamb says we could certainly criticize public schools or the educational system, but he is concerned about how these students got into college in the first place.
As a Catholic, he believes what is "probably a fairly normal view among most people – parents are the primary educators of their children."
He says the students and the parents need to take control of their own education, "but also, it's on the colleges to make sure the people they're admitting are able to do the coursework," Lamb adds.
In Pepperdine's case, he says it seems like an error on the university's part that these students were accepted without being able to handle the rigors of college coursework.
To address this, Lamb would start by figuring out whether the high schools are too lax and if the bar for SAT or ACT scores is set too low.
He also suggests that the institutions continuing to enroll students who struggle to read at the college level will have to invest in tutoring, mentoring, and perhaps hiring more teaching assistants to help the students with the material.
