A friend of mine in Japan told me that there have been noticeable changes in school curriculum recently; reducing the number of Kanji taught at elementary and middle schools is one of them, also the formalities that students use to solve math problems are less.

To persue most of the degrees unless their major is Japanese literature, university students are not required to know the number of Kanji, which are considered to be university leves, moreover, luck of interests in learning the language they already are supposed to be fluent doesn't help much.

I don't think comics are the ones to be blamed on as Maciamo has mentioned, there are many educational comics out there.