Students study less than ever: What are they doing in college?

August 10th, 2010 by Ken 2 Comments »

Studies show that students today are spending less hours studying than ever before. Study hours have dropped from an average of 24 hours a week to about 14 hours a week. So what is going on with today’s students? Are they even taking college seriously? In an article entitled “Students who don’t study” Patrick Allitt challenges the notion “that nearly every young person wants to be educated” and backs it up with insights into the changing landscape of higher education. Here are the highlights:

A groundbreaking report Leisure College USA, analyzes study time for students. Lazy students not owning up to high academic standards is nothing new, but is this generation particularly worse than prior ones? Expansion of technology has allowed students to complete reports much more quickly by using internet research and Word processing, instead of spending hours in a library cross referencing books. However, a 10 hour drop in study time cannot be explained by technology. The report highlights that the college campus is a place where “academic effort is scarcely detectable”

A lack of challenge: Students today do not feel obligated to go above and beyond in the classroom. They are more interested in doing what is needed to complete a class and no more. Combine that with falling academic standards and you have students just doing enough to get by. Schools are willing to go along with the process. Allitt describes the tenure effect, “Where professors…coast along year after year, not bad enough to be guilty of professional misconduct but not good enough to enrich or vivify the university.” Are schools providing good value for a degree if students do not have to study to earn their place?

Market pressures: Students have demanded more services from their colleges and they have gotten them. Going to college has grown into a total experience with leisure and extracurricular activities becoming a main point for attendance. Even the Princeton review ranks “Party Schools” and students use that as a reason for attendance. In order to support increasing enrollments, amenities have been added, and University budgets are being redistributed to things outside the classroom. As Richard Vedder says there is a “Country Clubization of the American University” and it is redirecting the priorities of tuition resources. All of this is done to support student demand.

Where to go from here? Having a good time in school is important, and meeting friends and being social is every bit a part of that. But when huge sums of money and resources are being poured into colleges, and tuition increases are a 6% to 8% a year, there has to be some accountability. The point of attending school is to build a future for yourself, but these articles reveal that students are really paying for a college experience and not for an education.

The great thing about tough economic times is that they can bring clarity to decisions. It is now painfully obvious that students cannot waste their time in college. They need to make it a productive experience so that there is a future after graduation. The Leisure College, USA report confirms that there is a direct correlation between increased study time and increased earnings after college. Students, take your classroom studies seriously and make the best of college, your future depends on it.

Tags: academic effort, academic standards, challenge students, college usa, extracurricular activities, going to college, groundbreaking report, higher education, internet research, lazy students, market pressures, patrick allitt, princeton review, professional misconduct, professors, study time, tenure, using internet, word processing, young person

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 at 9:08 pm and is filed under Parent, School, Student. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.