> What was that study recently, that fifty-eight percent of English majors at two universities couldn't read the opening paragraphs of Bleak House and that only

> What was that study recently, that fifty-eight percent of English majors at two universities couldn't read the opening paragraphs of Bleak House and that only five percent could read it acceptably? Yeah about that, that was a tiny study. 85 undergrads from two Kansas universities. Kansas isn't renowned for its universities. And this study was done in 2015 (11 years ago!), only published 2 years ago. "58%" is 49 undergrads. "5%" is 4 undergrads. I think it's massively unrepresentative of students at large. abstract: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/922346 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/922346 full paper: https://www.scribd.com/document/868947219/project-muse-922346 https://www.scribd.com/document/868947219/project-muse-92234... It's a very entertaining paper, as it goes into the juicier parts of the subjects' think-alouds, and analyses why the problematic readers were problematic readers. What's especially infuriating is they were told they could look up the internet if they wanted, and many chose to guess wrongly what something meant, rather than look it up. Perhaps they're not only bad at reading but also bad at searching. Today I suspect those people would be heading straight for the AI to tell them what to think.