Lecturers across the country say the situation is at crisis level because many students are entering university with a lack of basic literacy skills.
Otago English and linguistics associate professor Paul Tankard said the rise in technology in schools was a major cause of the problem and likened it to "cigarette smoking".
"We don’t figure out how to manage these things until we’ve seen the damage it’s doing.
"Like smoking, it could be generations before the problem is fixed.
"It’s getting so urgent that there will either be a turnaround — and it will have to be soon — or there won’t be one at all and we’ll all just be drawn into the matrix."
He said the education system had become "so flexible and accommodating" to diverse ways of learning there was the possibility of choosing options and pathways that fulfilled some aspects of the technical requirements but did not do other things that teachers had always expected book reading to do.
"If you can watch a film rather than read the book, or read an online precis or get some form of technology to read it for you, there’s not a lot of investigation that goes on.
He said a growing number of students were using AI to write assessment essays.
"I think our students are wanting one-shot solutions for everything and I think the internet has trained them to expect that and schools have gone along with it as well.
Prof Tankard’s views closely mirror a recent article in The Post, where University of Canterbury sociology associate professor Mike Grimshaw expressed major concerns about the number of New Zealand tertiary students who were "functionally illiterate".
Otago School of Performing Arts head Prof Anthony Ritchie echoed Prof Tankard’s and Prof Grimshaw’s concerns, but said it was not a new problem and it was certainly a solvable one.
"I can remember when I was a student, lecturers complaining about the standard of literacy, so you can go back 50 years and see this," Prof Ritchie said.
However, he believed the Covid-19 pandemic might have created a larger-than-normal cohort of students who were not as prepared for tertiary study because a significant amount of their education had been completed online at home.
"It’s not easy learning online from home. There are many distractions."
It had also created a cohort of students who were now staying at home and watching the lectures via livestream.
"We’ve noticed a marked decline in the number of students attending lectures and that could well be because of the switch to online learning in general.
"But I don’t think this is a permanent state, necessarily. This situation can be recovered.
"I do still have confidence in what can be achieved," he said.
Another Otago senior lecturer, who declined to be named, said the best students today were just as good as the best students 10-20 years ago, but there was a growing number who had poor literacy skills.
"Maybe writing long, flowing sentences is not their best skill, because they tend to use more bullet points and text language.
"But what they have got is a hell of a lot more IT skills and they’ve got a more advanced understanding of how to search things out and find things for themselves."
Otago deputy vice-chancellor academic Prof Stuart Brock said all students had to meet university entrance requirements, which included specific literacy criteria.
"We are confident students possess a foundational level of literacy before entering our programmes."
He said there was a decline in academic performance during the Covid-19 disruption, but it had since recovered to pre-Covid levels.
"The academic achievement rates of our student cohorts are currently as good as they have ever been."
Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds said the government aimed to include a new requirement for schools to teach an hour a day of reading, writing and maths, minimising classroom distractions by limiting cellphone use and working to improve student attendance rates.
She said the education system was not only vital to the economic prosperity of the country but to achieve better social outcomes.
