CASTLETON, Vt. (WCAX) – More and more students are entering their first year of college unprepared for the rigors of higher education. Vermont State University officials are among educators now looking at ways to address the problem.
VTSU Castleton sophomore Alexa Whelan is plugging away on an upcoming paper. She says her international baccalaureate program at her high school prepared her for the heavy college course load. “In terms of workload, I definitely felt prepared. We were reading a new book and writing papers like every single week, so I had a pretty vigorous workload in high school for that,” she said.
But Whelan says she notices many of her classmates and younger students falling behind. “Kids as young as five are on TikTok watching 15-second videos all day long and they don’t want to read books anymore, and they don’t know how to use their critical thinking to understand books anymore,” she said.
And that apathy has consequences in college. “I see students every day who lack the basic skills they need to complete college-level work and to succeed in the workforce. Written skills in particular, many of our students are very behind in written skills,” said Erika Nichols-Frazer, a VTSU writing and humanities development coordinator. She tutors students and sees the problem firsthand. She says many don’t know how to write research papers and lack an understanding of basic grammar and sentence structure. She says there are various reasons for the learning lag. “I definitely think the pandemic set many of our students behind. I think they didn’t have the same expectations or in-person instruction that many of them needed.”
Since the pandemic, many students depend on AI technology and Grammarly-type apps to help write papers, which experts say is also changing the way students read. “TikTok, Facebook — those are online resources typically written for the general public. So, the reading length is different than a journal article, the jargon is different,” said Anne Slonaker, a VTSU professor. She says that leaves teachers to pick up the slack. “I talk to them about how to manage their time, how to chunk out their reading, also provide them strategies for reading.”
Slonaker also tries to encourage personalized learning for the student to make it more digestible. But she says the best tactic is for students to start reading and writing with their parents when they are very young, and keeping it fun.
Literacy and critical thinking skills start young, and if students aren’t ready for college, they might not be ready for the workforce. Educators say they want to focus as much as they can on closing that gap to help the state’s future.