College Students Are Showing Skills Expected of 10-Year-Old Children

Imagine handing a college freshman a fourth-grade reading passage and watching them struggle. That’s not hypothetical. A new international skills survey found 8% of college students across the world’s richest nations read at or below the level expected of a ten-year-old. Math isn’t better: 9% test at that same benchmark. In some countries, it’s not one in ten students falling into that category. It’s more than one in five.

OECD Tested 160,000 Adults

The findings come from the OECD’s Survey of Adult Skills, a major assessment covering roughly 160,000 adults across 31 participating countries and economies. Researchers tested practical literacy and numeracy: reading instructions, interpreting documents, solving everyday math problems. Among the subset currently enrolled in higher education, a meaningful share scored at the survey’s lowest proficiency band. That band exists for a specific reason, and it isn’t a flattering one.

Germany and France Held the Line, Poland and the US Didn’t

The gap between countries is stark. Germany and France both kept their share of low-scoring college readers under 5%, among the strongest results in the OECD. Poland landed at the opposite extreme, with 21% of its college students reading at a ten-year-old’s level. Israel followed close behind at 20%, and the United States wasn’t far off at 14%, nearly triple the rate of its European counterparts.

The Math Numbers Are Just as Bad, and Israel Tops the List

Across OECD countries, 9% of college students do math at or below a ten-year-old’s level, edging past the reading gap. Italy, the United States, and Slovakia all cleared 15%. Israel posted the worst result of any participating country, at roughly 21%. In practical terms, that means in some college classrooms, more than one in five students are stuck solving problems most fourth graders could handle.

What “Level 1” Actually Means, According to the OECD

The comparison to ten-year-olds comes from journalists and researchers, not the OECD’s own language. The organization ranks adults on proficiency tiers, and scoring at “Level 1” or below marks the bottom of functional literacy: understanding short texts, filling out basic forms, following simple written instructions. Outlets have long described that tier as roughly comparable to a ten-year-old’s ability. The OECD hasn’t used that exact phrasing, but it hasn’t pushed back on it either.

Pandemic Gaps and Shrinking Budgets Set the Stage

Researchers point to several compounding causes. Pandemic-era school closures left an entire cohort with learning gaps that were never fully closed. Declining college enrollment in several countries pushed some schools to loosen admissions standards just to fill seats. Public education funding has also slipped in real terms across parts of the OECD, leaving fewer resources for remediation. None of those explanations, though, account for what’s happened since 2023.

Then Came ChatGPT, and Reading Stamina Kept Sliding

The survey results line up with the rapid spread of generative AI tools in classrooms. One professor described watching college students lose the ability to track a 20-page article, calling it a measurable, generational shift rather than a passing complaint. She pointed to a 2017 study showing that a smartphone’s mere presence, even powered off, measurably reduces available cognitive capacity. Universities, she said, are responding with improvisation instead of structural change.

A Yale Student Says Even Seminars Sound the Same Now

At Yale, a student named Amanda told CNN that flattened, AI-influenced prose is bleeding into elite classroom discussions, with peers sounding increasingly interchangeable. Researchers studying the phenomenon call it homogenization: students’ thinking converging toward the same patterns after heavy reliance on chatbots. A University of Southern California professor who co-authored a recent study on the topic called the loss of cognitive diversity “quite scary.”

One Minneapolis Teacher Banned Screens, and Confidence Doubled

Not every classroom is losing ground. At Washburn High School in Minneapolis, English teacher Maureen Mulvaney banned phones and laptops last year, requiring all coursework by hand. In September, only 46% of her students said they felt confident in their reading skills. By February, that number had climbed to 95%. Mulvaney says the fix wasn’t complicated. It just required taking the screens away entirely.

The Fix Might Be Simpler Than the Problem Suggests

The OECD’s numbers describe a slow-moving crisis across dozens of wealthy countries, one that predates AI but appears to be accelerating alongside it. Still, the Minneapolis results suggest the damage isn’t permanent. Removing distraction, not adding new technology, produced the fastest turnaround anyone has measured. For education systems weighing their next move, the evidence increasingly points toward less screen time, not more of it.