Colleges are confronting weakened literacy and are adapting pedagogies and student-success strategies. Professors report incoming undergraduates who struggle with sentence-level comprehension, prompting faculty to redesign syllabi, incorporate repeated close reading, and adopt scaffolded assignments. At the same time, higher-ed leaders press proven interventions to boost graduation rates, from structured advising to targeted course redesign and cross-campus supports. Research and practitioner guides emphasize that improving completion requires coordinated academic and administrative action: intrusive advising, predictive analytics, and early-alert systems. Graduations can rise when institutions pair curriculum redesign with persistent, relationship-based support that addresses students' academic and nonacademic barriers. Colleges that treat literacy deficits as an institutional challenge—rather than an individual student problem—are more likely to preserve time-to-degree and protect downstream workforce readiness.