When asked what I’m studying, I normally shrug and noncommittally say “English.” I want to make it clear that I’m aware it’s a somewhat romantic pursuit, set apart from the new standard of preprofessional studies and STEM obsessions that have spread throughout the undergraduate world. It’s easy to interrogate myself and try to identify the point of studying English literature. I find myself searching for an answer that feels like it’s moving further and further away in an increasingly artificial world.
It’s no secret that the English major has been steadily declining in recent years. According to one report, English was the “fastest-declin[ing] major from 2013-2018, with a 25.5% decrease in the number of graduates.” The discipline faces a real threat in the face of funding cuts to the humanities and the widespread proliferation of large language models such as OpenAI’s very popular ChatGPT.
In response, university English departments try to widely advertise what the major offers. The Yale English Department website lists the benefits of an English major, one of which is “to acquire tools that will never lose value.” The department directly addresses concerns of the reduced value of an English degree as a result of artificial intelligence. “The ability to learn to think as you write is something AI can’t replicate,” the website states. “Reading and writing cultivate the mind in ways that can’t be replaced by machines.” Tufts’ Department of English sends periodic emails to undecided undergraduate students, urging them to attend its open house to learn more about what the major offers.
This cynicism about the state of the humanities arrives concurrently with a decline in reading comprehension. In 2025, National Assessment of Educational Progress scores showed alarming results: Roughly 40% of American fourth graders were underperforming in reading, scoring beneath the NAEP basic level. According to the NAEP, this means that “they likely cannot recognize a reason for a character’s action implied in a story.”
Additionally, around a third of American eighth graders (“the largest percentage ever”) failed to reach the NAEP basic reading benchmark. In 2024, the NAEP found that only 35% of high school seniors were deemed prepared for college-level reading. It seems absurd that American students, belonging to one of the richest nations in the world, should be approaching functional illiteracy in the 21st century.
While basic reading comprehension is, by some measures, at an all-time low, English grades have somehow improved overall. The ACT found that from 2010 to 2022, the number of A’s received in English rose from 47% to 56%. While it’s difficult to measure grade inflation across universities, many professors seem to be desperately trying to pass underperforming students and, in doing so, lower the standard for an A.
There are a few possible explanations for this sudden and severe decline in academic performance. One plausible explanation may be shortened attention spans. Gloria Mark, a psychology professor and researcher at the University of California, Irvine, is well known for her research on attention spans. When she first began measuring attention spans in 2004, the calculated average was 2.5 minutes. In 2012, that number decreased to 75 seconds, and in the last seven or eight years, it decreased again to 47 seconds. These statistics paint a worrying picture of the future, one where we become less and less able to focus our attention. Reading is one practice that seems to be at immense risk.
Another feasible contributor to the reading comprehension decline is large language models. A new MIT study suggests that ChatGPT can interfere with learning and deteriorate basic critical thinking skills. Participants aged 18-39 were divided into three groups: one with access to ChatGPT, one with access to Google’s search engine and one with only their own minds as a resource.
Participants were asked to write SAT-style essays while their brain activity was recorded using an electroencephalogram. Researchers found that over the course of several months, “ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study.” Their ChatGPT use had a measurable effect on brain activity, with the EEGs reporting “low executive control and attentional engagement.” Meanwhile, the brain-only group were both more satisfied with their essays and consistently showed the “highest neural connectivity.” The study makes it clear that, if ChatGPT use was continued, there would be detrimental effects to participants’ ability to think for themselves and stay engaged with their work.
However, the study does not condemn AI use completely. After writing a first draft of the essays, participants were asked to rewrite them, this time with access to ChatGPT. Even while using ChatGPT to aid a rewrite, the brain-only group still showed “a significant increase in brain connectivity across all EEG frequency bands,” proving that AI use may actually be conducive to learning under specific conditions.
Large language models are certainly the new Goliath threatening literacy, but they are working in conjunction with other forces in the education system. As Georgia Lavigne, a lecturer in Tufts’ English department, remarks, “there are methods of teaching reading at the elementary level that have proliferated nationwide that actually impair some critical reading skills at early junctures.”
It’s true, too, that websites like SparkNotes and LitCharts, which offer summaries and analyses of many texts, have become widely available to students. However, unlike ChatGPT summaries, these are written by graduate students and professors. Interestingly, SparkNotes has been owned by Barnes & Noble since 2001, though it seems counterintuitive given that it offers an abridged and simplified summary of the same books Barnes & Noble sells.
It is easy to place the blame on artificial intelligence and online resources such as SparkNotes, but it is important to consider our own role in the national failure to sufficiently educate our children. An article in The Atlantic by Walt Hunter, a professor of English at Case Western Reserve University, encourages pushing students outside of their comfortable reading boundaries. According to Hunter, misunderstanding and confusion are integral to the reading comprehension process.
Hunter suggests encouraging students to raise their hands and say something totally off-base about a convoluted passage, as long as that mistake is their own and not ChatGPT’s. Emphasizing the value of studying literature and accepting both its joys and inconveniences is a path forward.
