An Oxford University professor of English has said state-educated students struggle to read long novels.

According to reports, students are less able to read than previous generations amid a decline in literacy rates.

Smartphones and social media are often seen as the root of the problem, an “attrition of attention”.

However, Professor Sir Jonathan Bate believes that university diversity drives are to blame.

Elite universities such as Cambridge and Oxford have been trying to recruit more state school pupils, while admissions from leading private institutions have dropped to record lows.

Sir Jonathan, who is also a foundation professor of environmental humanities at Arizona State University, told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “One factor is a kind of unintended consequence of the push in both elite British and American universities towards diversity and access. 

“You know, the very desirable idea of getting in more students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

"Because those students come from disadvantaged schools where the teacher’s main task is crowd control, the demands in terms of reading long books are just not there.”

His comments came after an article was published in The Atlantic magazine last week titled “The elite college students who can’t read books”.

The article claimed that “private schools, which produce a disproportionate share of elite college students, seem to have been slower to shift away from reading complete volumes – leading to... a disconcerting reading-skills gap among incoming freshmen”.

“The elite college students who can’t read books"

Sir Jonathan added that he experienced this attainment gap when teaching at Oxford.

“They were able students, but they simply hadn’t been exposed to large numbers of long books,” he said.

“They hadn’t really developed that habit of concentrated, lengthy reading which private schools in both the UK and the US concentrate on.”

He claimed that literature students now struggle to finish one book in three weeks, whereas they had previously been able to read three in just one week.

He told the broadcaster: “I’ve been teaching in British and American universities for 40 years, and when I began in Cambridge, you could say to students ‘this week, it’s Dickens, so please read Great Expectations, David Copperfield and Bleak House’.

“Now, instead of three novels in a week, many students will struggle to get through one novel in three weeks.”

He added: “Of course, it really does all begin in schools, doesn’t it? You only have to look at the thinning of the GCSE and A level syllabuses and the tendency to prescribe works because they’re shorter.

"I think of it as the ‘John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men effect’. You know, they’d never prescribe The Grapes of Wrath anymore, but Of Mice and Men is nice and short.”

Of Mice and Men, according to Sir Jonathan, is popular on school curriculums because it is ‘nice and short’.

Universities are required by the higher education watchdog to have plans on “widening access” to students from different backgrounds.

In its access plan for the five academic years to 2024-25, Cambridge chose to introduce state school targets, stating that it wanted to increase the proportion of state school undergraduates.

The decline in offer rates at top independent schools has led to warnings from the independent schools’ sector and parents, who said universities should not be about “social engineering”.

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When asked about the long-term impact of literature students from state schools being unable to read long books, Sir Jonathan said it was troubling for literary culture, wider society and the economy.

He said: “The longer-term impact is very troubling for the future of a literary culture.

“If you haven’t got readers, what are writers going to do? The intensive, thoughtful, quiet reading of great books is good for mental health.

"It’s very, very good for developing skills of concentration and critical thinking, and if that falls away, that is problematic for businesses, for society, for individuals.”