English professor warns: Today’s students cannot read or focus on lengthy assignments– www.thecollegefix.com

Another professor has joined the chorus of scholars warning that students’ reading skills and attention spans are abysmal.

Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, literature Professor Tyler Jagt told of an assignment for his rhetoric and writing class that asked students to read a 20-page paper. Not one student finished the paper.

“It was the same length I had assigned for five years and the same length I had read without complaint as an undergraduate a decade ago,” wrote Jagt, who has taught literature and critical writing at Mercer University, James Madison University, and Wake Forest University.