20% of Japanese University student with 13 to 15 year-old reading abilities

[misa.j]

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.

[Maciamo]

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 level

Isn't it odd that foreign students who haven't grown up in Japan and who want to attend a Japanese university or college must pass the JLPT1 test and therefore know like 2000 kanji. How comes that these foreign students won't even be admitted if they fail the test, but native-speaker Japanese who have studied kanji every day for at least 12 years and must take the infamous and supposedly extremely difficult "juken" (university entrance exam) manage to go through with a 13-year old kanji level ? Isn't their mother-tongue ability part of the juken ? One of two students could be lucky, but 20% out of 13,000 in 33 universities, that really means that the problem also resides in the juken not being that difficult (apparently less difficult than the JLPT1 for non-native-speakers regarding kanji).

[Glenn]

Isn't it odd that foreign students who haven't grown up in Japan and who want to attend a Japanese university or college must pass the JLPT1 test and therefore know like 2000 kanji. How comes that these foreign students won't even be admitted if they fail the test, but native-speaker Japanese who have studied kanji every day for at least 12 years and must take the infamous and supposedly extremely difficult "juken" (university entrance exam) manage to go through with a 13-year old kanji level ? Isn't their mother-tongue ability part of the juken ? One of two students could be lucky, but 20% out of 13,000 in 33 universities, that really means that the problem also resides in the juken not being that difficult (apparently less difficult than the JLPT1 for non-native-speakers regarding kanji).

Isn't it also true that the JLPT 1 focuses on parts of the language that are, shall I say, less than practical? I've heard that passing level 1 requires special study for the test, as opposed to just knowing Japanese at a high level. It seems as though it doesn't so much test the ability of the test taker to use the language as it does the ability to learn the material for the test.

That doesn't wonder me in the very least. Of course, manga has absolutely no part in it.
The cause for this is the extremely complex kanji writing system. With such a thing, a high illiteracy (or poor literacy skills) is practically inevitable.
It's absolutely about high noon that they get rid of these way too complex kanji. They claim to be a very advanced country, but still cling to this totally antiquated spelling system, which only brings lots of pain and hardship for Japanese and non-Japanese alike
I know that replacing the kanji won't be easily done, as there are many homophones and such, but it is a dire problem which really needs to be tackled now, better sooner than later, so they should better start working on a solution!

Aside from what bossel said, it has been proven that it is quicker to read logographs than it is to read phonetic systems, such as alphabets, because the writing is converted first to meaning in the mind. With an alphabet, the writing is first converted to sound, and then meaning.

I think that the hardest part about kanji is that there are so many of them, and that there are three different components to learn for each of them, sometimes with various subcomponents. Then there are the ones that mean almost the exact same thing. Despite that, though, I think that they are still useful and valuable in today's world. See also this thread.