I have read of some university professors who said that it is common now that incoming first-year students have never read even one book in their entire lives.

A chapter or two here or there, now and then, yes, but not even one single book in entirety. - Donald Sensing

• And so this. 

See also my own essay, "Why college grads don't know how to think," 

Kevin Bakerr

For later perusal. The opening paragraph:

"Functional illiteracy was once a social diagnosis, not an academic one. It referred to those who could technically read but could not follow an argument, sustain attention, or extract meaning from a text. It was never a term one expected to hear applied to universities. And yet it has begun to surface with increasing regularity in conversations among faculty themselves. Literature professors now admit—quietly in offices, more openly in essays—that many students cannot manage the kind of reading their disciplines presuppose. They can recognise words; they cannot inhabit a text."