6 ms·

College students spend less and less time studying, leisure time on the rise

18 points by av500 16y ago

Alleyfield 16y ago
It's somewhat depressing to see this in action as well - but I don't really mind. It's easier for the nerds to stand out from the rest.
ramchip 16y ago
The author has a more recent version on his website, with more data: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~babcock/LeisureCollege_4.pdf http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~babcock/LeisureCollege_4.pdf I wouldn't jump to conclusions, though. As far as I can see, this isn't peer-reviewed research, and it looks heavily based on few sources. Some more discussion: http://permut.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/declining-standards-in-higher-education/ http://permut.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/declining-standards-i... (The formatting is also very unprofessional... not that it changes the analysis, but I tend to take it as a lack of attention to detail.)
- robotresearcher 16y ago
  > (The formatting is also very unprofessional. No, this is what academic papers usually look like when prepared for submission to journals. After review, if the article is accepted and modifications done, the journal staff takes the text and images and prepares a typeset article. This is all unfortunate since the reviewers and editors have to read the damn stuff looking like this. Edit: the point of this comment is to say that this is what high-quality work looks like on submission. This work may be good or bad, but you can't tell by the lack of typesetting.
  - ramchip 16y ago
    It probably depends on your research field. In my main field (part of optics), articles must usually be sent in a specified format. If accepted, the final version is prepared by the authors and published as-is. Journals provide templates, usually for Word and/or LaTeX. Examples: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/submit/templates/ http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/submit/templates/ http://spie.org/x5258.xml http://spie.org/x5258.xml I would at least expect the text to be justified, and no 3D graphs (I'm talking about the general format, not strictly typesetting). Also, an IP address with a long query string isn't a very good reference.
samdk 16y ago
I find this study rather disturbing. It never even attempts to actually define "study time". There are about 40 instances of the term's use just within the paper and not a single attempt to provide a definition. I'm guessing that it means time studying and work for classes outside of class, but I don't know for sure. A sentence or two to define it would be welcome. I'm also disappointed that the only statistics presented are averages. Averages are really not useful enough to stand on their own, and it'd be very helpful to know the standard deviation at least. From my own experience (at a selective 4-year liberal arts college, for reference), the amount of work people put in varies immensely depending on the person. I would have liked to see statistics broken down by class year as well. I spent a lot less time on work my first year here (there was less of it) than I have the past two.
- slashcom 16y ago
  An extended version of the same paper: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~babcock/College_time_use_NBER.pdf http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~babcock/College_time_use_NBER.pdf While it doesn't have all the information you'd like to see, it does contain a much greater amount of detail and raw statistical information, broken down much further.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
shaddi 16y ago
Surveys were administered to 4 large classes of students at a major public university in California. Hmm... This is out of UCSB. Given it's location [1] I'd sure hope their students were taking ample time for leisure. [1] http://is.gd/cZ6WR http://is.gd/cZ6WR (gmap)
- zackattack 16y ago
  It is one of my great regrets in life that I did not attend college at UCSB and instead chose to attend a more "prestigious" institution. High schoolers: don't make my mistake, and if you're confused, send me an email. Let me assuage my regret by steering you towards the Good Life.
- crpatino 16y ago
  Don't you people know how to read!!! The original data for the article is taken from 4 independent surveys, applied nationwide at different times between 1961 to 2003. Since the wording of the survey may have elicited students in 1961 to over report studying time, compared with their peers in later years, an additional experiment was conducted. A sample of University of California students were taken and each applied one of the 4 surveys at random. Results show that the wording of the surveys partially (20%) account for the differences in reporting time, but the general trend remains. 20 minutes less study each year, on average.
johnohara 16y ago
A full-time salary with benefits, a 20-hour work week, 12 weeks vacation every summer, a state pension, an office with staff and secretaries outfitted with equipment you didn't pay for, TA's doing the heavy lifting, Santa Barbara's weather, coastline and restaurants, and of course, tenure. Let me be the first to speak on behalf of all the students and families out there struggling to pay the equivalent purchase price of a brand new BMW 760Li in tuition for a four-year degree while you were actually taking the time to think about, write and publish this tripe: Fk you and the horse you rode in on.
- epochwolf 16y ago
  Wow, are we just a tad bitter?
  - sprout 16y ago
    It's a very fair point though. Time not spent studying is not automatically leisure.
  - johnohara 16y ago
    This article is disrespectful of what students have to do to get a college education today. The students they criticize are the same ones pulling the outmoded college cart by paying their tuition with ever increasing amounts of debt. Without those students there would be no salary or study. Plus, the authors students seem to be doing what they are asked and giving back generally positive ratings. Babcock: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=956122 http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=956122 Marks: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=493516 http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=493516 So why do they deserve to have such an ungrateful and cynical article written about them? If pointing that out makes me bitter then so be it.
    - epochwolf 16y ago
      > This article is disrespectful of what students have to do to get a college education today. I completely agree with you on this point. I am quite annoyed with the article. > So why do they deserve to have such an ungrateful and cynical article written about them? No they don't. But, do you really need to reply "fuck you and the horse you rode in on?"?
kingkawn 16y ago
I'm currently back in school summer and there is no space left in the library, even on weekends in the summer. This isn't universally true of course, but neither is what is asserted in this paper. It seems part of a larger trend of baby-boomers discovering the joy of complaining about kids these days.
- zokier 16y ago
  Library might be bit more convenient for study, but its not a requirement. Of course fullness of libraries might discourage some students from studying, which in turn affects the statistics.
  - kingkawn 16y ago
    Definitely true, there is probably studying going on outside. That said, people being in the library still represents a positive indicator of studying, rather than the opposite. My school has a lot of libraries, many of which close early or altogether in the summer. With a small sample you could postulate that the main library is merely absorbing the displaced. Yet during the regular semester it is quite difficult to find seats in every one of them. The best conclusion would be that the libraries heavy use represents years of experience by the administration at providing slightly too few seats for the given student population. Also, "school summer" in my original comment indicates that my prospects are dim.
djm 16y ago
I haven't read the linked paper, but if it's conclusion is correct and students are spending less time studying, then all I can say is "good for them"! Honestly, it seems like kids are expected to work flat out in school these days, killing themselves to get top grades and doing as much extra curricular stuff as they can schedule. It's as if taking a larger course load and burning out is a badge of honour. If I went back to school now I would take a light course load in order to better spend my time on my own projects. I wouldn't worry too much about my grades as long as they were "good enough" and I would just try to enjoy myself and keep it fun.
- yardie 16y ago
  I'd probably do the same. Between trying to keep up at 18cr/semester, minimum wage work-study, and part-time jobs either my health or my grades were suffering at any moment. Part of it was my overly eager major (yes aerospace majors normally take 18credits of mindbreaking classes), and naivete as a freshman. On the other hand, as a family and career man I find I have even less free time than I did in university.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Honestly, it seems like kids are expected to work flat out in school these days, killing themselves to get top grades and doing as much extra curricular stuff as they can schedule. I don't think it's necessarily the case that they are expected to. But to get into college, they had to spend 4 years doing this in high school, so it may just be force of habit.
jpdbaugh 16y ago
I go to a Big 10 school and I can honestly say that I need to spend less than 10 hours a week outside of regular class to make 3.0 or better. Maybe I am just a fast learner and granted my major is Information Sciences and Technology (I should have done Computer Science, or even English and learned web development on the side, but I digress) and isn't at all challenging but college, for me at least, feels like a slightly harder version of high school. I shouldn't be able to to work 20 hours a week at an internship, pledge a fraternity, and do freelance work with a fulltime course load, however I did last semester. I am not looking for a pat on the back because I learn far more on my own anyway I just wanted to say how little challenge these new "IT" majors are. If you are about to enter college and want to do "computer stuff" pick computer science, or even a liberal arts degree and teach yourself because you will have to anyway.
- arghnoname 16y ago
  The classes make a big difference in study time required. Also, in my experience going for a 4.0 is much more difficult than a 3.0. Last semester I had individual courses take as much outside class time as your entire workload (Mathematics/CS double major). Maybe this is more a failing on my part and I'm inefficient, etc. I will note if my goal in my more time consuming courses was a B instead of an A I'd have been able to probably cut the work-time in half.
  - jpdbaugh 16y ago
    "The classes make a big difference in study time required" I personally just take whatever depending on whether or not the class is interesting to me or not, but a lot of students will take courses based on the easiness rating on sites like Rate My Professor. It is entirely possible today with sites such as that to cherry pick an absurdly easy course load. "Also, in my experience going for a 4.0 is much more difficult than a 3.0" I completely agree. To get a 3.0 for most majors you simply have to show up to class and tests and complete all of the assignments. Thats it. The problem is that 3.0 is the new average. This isn't how grades should work. Average students should get 2.0 GPAs. I think the average GPA at my school is about 2.9. Obviously, this is from GPA inflation. I agree though that getting a 4.0 is still very difficult and impressive. I just can't motivate myself to try and get one because I don't find my major terribly useful, nor do I think GPA really matters for me. Besides I would have to soak at 5x as many hours into studying...
csomar 16y ago
I study %80 less than other students in my university. But does the study they do is really worth it? They memorize courses by heart to just pass the exams and then forget all about it. They don't even understand the core phenomenas and their aim is to get grades and not to build knowledge. As a result, I had lot of free time to start a small freelancing business that benefited both me and the society. I also had more time for leisure activities, that I think they really worth it. -Third-World Citizen, may be things are different in the developed world-
Kluny 16y ago
They didn't have Google back in the 60's, did they? Maybe those ten hours used to be spent just looking for the damn book you need to study, whereas now you can get it with a quick search. I think that's worth considering.
- crpatino 16y ago
  They mention this factor in the article as well as other IT technologies that may be helping students to make a better use of their time. The authors grant that this may be a factor in the last decade or so, but since the biggest decline observed happened between 1961 and 1981 (in the order or 20 less minutes of study per year), they assume that the bigger trend remains.
jchonphoenix 16y ago
The author mentions HERI schools which he used as a subset of universities to represent all universities. Furthurmore, the HERI schools were chosen based on which schools allowed him to collect data, or had publicly available data. This automatically biases his scale towards public universities and colleges. Private universities would be less likely to allow the author to conduct a study on their campus or provide data. Additionally, schools range in difficulty and "study time." The reason some schools are known as "party schools" and others are known as hard schools are because some require more work than others. I'm sure MIT, CMU, Berkeley and Stanford are much more time consuming that schools like Cal Poly, Penn State, Michigan State, and Texas A&M. With a biased sample, you can't make broad scale assumptions. This paper is just poorly conducted research.
drivebyacct 16y ago
I and three other students designed a dual pass train scheduler with a hand written algorithm complete with a webservice and a webapp interface. In addition to building a processor, in addition to the other 6/7 of my classes. I'm tired of older generations telling me I don't work as hard as they did. I know it's bs.

18 points by av500 16y ago

It's somewhat depressing to see this in action as well - but I don't really mind. It's easier for the nerds to stand out from the rest.

ramchip 16y ago

The author has a more recent version on his website, with more data: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~babcock/LeisureCollege_4.pdf http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~babcock/LeisureCollege_4.pdf I wouldn't jump to conclusions, though. As far as I can see, this isn't peer-reviewed research, and it looks heavily based on few sources. Some more discussion: http://permut.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/declining-standards-in-higher-education/ http://permut.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/declining-standards-i... (The formatting is also very unprofessional... not that it changes the analysis, but I tend to take it as a lack of attention to detail.)

robotresearcher 16y ago
> (The formatting is also very unprofessional. No, this is what academic papers usually look like when prepared for submission to journals. After review, if the article is accepted and modifications done, the journal staff takes the text and images and prepares a typeset article. This is all unfortunate since the reviewers and editors have to read the damn stuff looking like this. Edit: the point of this comment is to say that this is what high-quality work looks like on submission. This work may be good or bad, but you can't tell by the lack of typesetting.
- ramchip 16y ago
  It probably depends on your research field. In my main field (part of optics), articles must usually be sent in a specified format. If accepted, the final version is prepared by the authors and published as-is. Journals provide templates, usually for Word and/or LaTeX. Examples: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/submit/templates/ http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/submit/templates/ http://spie.org/x5258.xml http://spie.org/x5258.xml I would at least expect the text to be justified, and no 3D graphs (I'm talking about the general format, not strictly typesetting). Also, an IP address with a long query string isn't a very good reference.

samdk 16y ago

I find this study rather disturbing. It never even attempts to actually define "study time". There are about 40 instances of the term's use just within the paper and not a single attempt to provide a definition. I'm guessing that it means time studying and work for classes outside of class, but I don't know for sure. A sentence or two to define it would be welcome. I'm also disappointed that the only statistics presented are averages. Averages are really not useful enough to stand on their own, and it'd be very helpful to know the standard deviation at least. From my own experience (at a selective 4-year liberal arts college, for reference), the amount of work people put in varies immensely depending on the person. I would have liked to see statistics broken down by class year as well. I spent a lot less time on work my first year here (there was less of it) than I have the past two.

slashcom 16y ago
An extended version of the same paper: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~babcock/College_time_use_NBER.pdf http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~babcock/College_time_use_NBER.pdf While it doesn't have all the information you'd like to see, it does contain a much greater amount of detail and raw statistical information, broken down much further.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

shaddi 16y ago

Surveys were administered to 4 large classes of students at a major public university in California. Hmm... This is out of UCSB. Given it's location [1] I'd sure hope their students were taking ample time for leisure. [1] http://is.gd/cZ6WR http://is.gd/cZ6WR (gmap)

zackattack 16y ago
It is one of my great regrets in life that I did not attend college at UCSB and instead chose to attend a more "prestigious" institution. High schoolers: don't make my mistake, and if you're confused, send me an email. Let me assuage my regret by steering you towards the Good Life.
crpatino 16y ago
Don't you people know how to read!!! The original data for the article is taken from 4 independent surveys, applied nationwide at different times between 1961 to 2003. Since the wording of the survey may have elicited students in 1961 to over report studying time, compared with their peers in later years, an additional experiment was conducted. A sample of University of California students were taken and each applied one of the 4 surveys at random. Results show that the wording of the surveys partially (20%) account for the differences in reporting time, but the general trend remains. 20 minutes less study each year, on average.

johnohara 16y ago

A full-time salary with benefits, a 20-hour work week, 12 weeks vacation every summer, a state pension, an office with staff and secretaries outfitted with equipment you didn't pay for, TA's doing the heavy lifting, Santa Barbara's weather, coastline and restaurants, and of course, tenure. Let me be the first to speak on behalf of all the students and families out there struggling to pay the equivalent purchase price of a brand new BMW 760Li in tuition for a four-year degree while you were actually taking the time to think about, write and publish this tripe: Fk you and the horse you rode in on.

epochwolf 16y ago
Wow, are we just a tad bitter?
- sprout 16y ago
  It's a very fair point though. Time not spent studying is not automatically leisure.
- johnohara 16y ago
  This article is disrespectful of what students have to do to get a college education today. The students they criticize are the same ones pulling the outmoded college cart by paying their tuition with ever increasing amounts of debt. Without those students there would be no salary or study. Plus, the authors students seem to be doing what they are asked and giving back generally positive ratings. Babcock: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=956122 http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=956122 Marks: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=493516 http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=493516 So why do they deserve to have such an ungrateful and cynical article written about them? If pointing that out makes me bitter then so be it.
  - epochwolf 16y ago
    > This article is disrespectful of what students have to do to get a college education today. I completely agree with you on this point. I am quite annoyed with the article. > So why do they deserve to have such an ungrateful and cynical article written about them? No they don't. But, do you really need to reply "fuck you and the horse you rode in on?"?

kingkawn 16y ago

I'm currently back in school summer and there is no space left in the library, even on weekends in the summer. This isn't universally true of course, but neither is what is asserted in this paper. It seems part of a larger trend of baby-boomers discovering the joy of complaining about kids these days.

zokier 16y ago
Library might be bit more convenient for study, but its not a requirement. Of course fullness of libraries might discourage some students from studying, which in turn affects the statistics.
- kingkawn 16y ago
  Definitely true, there is probably studying going on outside. That said, people being in the library still represents a positive indicator of studying, rather than the opposite. My school has a lot of libraries, many of which close early or altogether in the summer. With a small sample you could postulate that the main library is merely absorbing the displaced. Yet during the regular semester it is quite difficult to find seats in every one of them. The best conclusion would be that the libraries heavy use represents years of experience by the administration at providing slightly too few seats for the given student population. Also, "school summer" in my original comment indicates that my prospects are dim.

djm 16y ago

I haven't read the linked paper, but if it's conclusion is correct and students are spending less time studying, then all I can say is "good for them"! Honestly, it seems like kids are expected to work flat out in school these days, killing themselves to get top grades and doing as much extra curricular stuff as they can schedule. It's as if taking a larger course load and burning out is a badge of honour. If I went back to school now I would take a light course load in order to better spend my time on my own projects. I wouldn't worry too much about my grades as long as they were "good enough" and I would just try to enjoy myself and keep it fun.

yardie 16y ago
I'd probably do the same. Between trying to keep up at 18cr/semester, minimum wage work-study, and part-time jobs either my health or my grades were suffering at any moment. Part of it was my overly eager major (yes aerospace majors normally take 18credits of mindbreaking classes), and naivete as a freshman. On the other hand, as a family and career man I find I have even less free time than I did in university.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
Honestly, it seems like kids are expected to work flat out in school these days, killing themselves to get top grades and doing as much extra curricular stuff as they can schedule. I don't think it's necessarily the case that they are expected to. But to get into college, they had to spend 4 years doing this in high school, so it may just be force of habit.

jpdbaugh 16y ago

I go to a Big 10 school and I can honestly say that I need to spend less than 10 hours a week outside of regular class to make 3.0 or better. Maybe I am just a fast learner and granted my major is Information Sciences and Technology (I should have done Computer Science, or even English and learned web development on the side, but I digress) and isn't at all challenging but college, for me at least, feels like a slightly harder version of high school. I shouldn't be able to to work 20 hours a week at an internship, pledge a fraternity, and do freelance work with a fulltime course load, however I did last semester. I am not looking for a pat on the back because I learn far more on my own anyway I just wanted to say how little challenge these new "IT" majors are. If you are about to enter college and want to do "computer stuff" pick computer science, or even a liberal arts degree and teach yourself because you will have to anyway.

arghnoname 16y ago
The classes make a big difference in study time required. Also, in my experience going for a 4.0 is much more difficult than a 3.0. Last semester I had individual courses take as much outside class time as your entire workload (Mathematics/CS double major). Maybe this is more a failing on my part and I'm inefficient, etc. I will note if my goal in my more time consuming courses was a B instead of an A I'd have been able to probably cut the work-time in half.
- jpdbaugh 16y ago
  "The classes make a big difference in study time required" I personally just take whatever depending on whether or not the class is interesting to me or not, but a lot of students will take courses based on the easiness rating on sites like Rate My Professor. It is entirely possible today with sites such as that to cherry pick an absurdly easy course load. "Also, in my experience going for a 4.0 is much more difficult than a 3.0" I completely agree. To get a 3.0 for most majors you simply have to show up to class and tests and complete all of the assignments. Thats it. The problem is that 3.0 is the new average. This isn't how grades should work. Average students should get 2.0 GPAs. I think the average GPA at my school is about 2.9. Obviously, this is from GPA inflation. I agree though that getting a 4.0 is still very difficult and impressive. I just can't motivate myself to try and get one because I don't find my major terribly useful, nor do I think GPA really matters for me. Besides I would have to soak at 5x as many hours into studying...

csomar 16y ago

I study %80 less than other students in my university. But does the study they do is really worth it? They memorize courses by heart to just pass the exams and then forget all about it. They don't even understand the core phenomenas and their aim is to get grades and not to build knowledge. As a result, I had lot of free time to start a small freelancing business that benefited both me and the society. I also had more time for leisure activities, that I think they really worth it. -Third-World Citizen, may be things are different in the developed world-

Kluny 16y ago

They didn't have Google back in the 60's, did they? Maybe those ten hours used to be spent just looking for the damn book you need to study, whereas now you can get it with a quick search. I think that's worth considering.

crpatino 16y ago
They mention this factor in the article as well as other IT technologies that may be helping students to make a better use of their time. The authors grant that this may be a factor in the last decade or so, but since the biggest decline observed happened between 1961 and 1981 (in the order or 20 less minutes of study per year), they assume that the bigger trend remains.

jchonphoenix 16y ago

The author mentions HERI schools which he used as a subset of universities to represent all universities. Furthurmore, the HERI schools were chosen based on which schools allowed him to collect data, or had publicly available data. This automatically biases his scale towards public universities and colleges. Private universities would be less likely to allow the author to conduct a study on their campus or provide data. Additionally, schools range in difficulty and "study time." The reason some schools are known as "party schools" and others are known as hard schools are because some require more work than others. I'm sure MIT, CMU, Berkeley and Stanford are much more time consuming that schools like Cal Poly, Penn State, Michigan State, and Texas A&M. With a biased sample, you can't make broad scale assumptions. This paper is just poorly conducted research.

drivebyacct 16y ago

I and three other students designed a dual pass train scheduler with a hand written algorithm complete with a webservice and a webapp interface. In addition to building a processor, in addition to the other 6/7 of my classes. I'm tired of older generations telling me I don't work as hard as they did. I know it's bs.