7 ms·

Theories on Why College Kids Are Studying Less

24 points by jamesbritt 16y ago

philwelch 16y ago
Many of these theories fall back to one root cause--universities can't scale to meet the demand for university education. Consider: adjust faculty are the result of a supply/demand mismatch between Ph.D's and professorships; competition for tenure (or even adjunct positions) makes course evaluations more important to game, and thus grade inflation and smaller assignments became the expectation; this same competition makes it even more important to publish; undergraduate enrollment has outpaced scholarship availability requiring more students to work. This covers four out of eight causes (even five, if you consider "grades becoming less important than activities" to be a consequence of grade inflation).
kd0amg 16y ago
Slightly off-topic, but... The University of California study finds that the average student at a four-year college in 1961 studied about 24 hours a week. Today’s average student hits the books for just 14 hours. As I was nearing the end of high school, everyone was telling me that in college, I would probably have to do two hours of studying for every one hour of class. 12 hours of class (one for each two of the 24 hours spent studying) seems like an unusually light course load to me (and it was the minimum for maintaining full-time status), so I'm inclined to doubt that that ratio was the norm then. Where did this two-per-one norm come from?
- elai 16y ago
  You can do that if you want straight As!
  - Groxx 16y ago
    You can do that if you want an aneurysm! http://thereifixedit.com/ http://thereifixedit.com/ edit: disclaimer: I had a 21 credit semester. Not recommended.
zbanks 16y ago
Did these studies ever show a decline in grades? If grades stayed (relatively) the same, or even increased, then the lack of studying shouldn't be a problem. Either kids are smarter, or the courses aren't forcing them to study as much. In this latter case, it is the professors to blame, not the kids. Granted, all these only come out if the grades did not decline significantly.
- philk 16y ago
  This is confounded somewhat by the problem of grade inflation. I suppose another way to measure would be figuring out if we're getting more useful graduates but I can't think of how to measure that (apart from perhaps average increase in wages).
- ilovecomputers 16y ago
  I've had courses that have challenged me to study because either the topic was difficult or the professor was a researching mathematician who rambled in lecture. However this article made me notice of a trend of having less free time: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/04/what_happened_to_studying/?page=full http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/04/... Personally, the culture outside of the classroom was that you had to be involved in many different things: work, clubs, career building, etc. Like studying itself would not make you a successful person. Is this forcing professors to make me study less? Am I gaining less knowledge because of it? I wish I knew, but I'm too busy studying to know ;) EDIT: Well to be honest, too busy surfing the internet instead of studying. Yes it's an addiction and an uphill battle to fight it, but it beats being addicted to WOW like my previous roommate. At least I have a small insight into the thinking of entrepreneur-ing hackers.
Towle_ 16y ago
NONE of those theories are the reason. And frankly, I find it worrisome none of these guys can even come close. Studying methods becoming more efficient? C'mon, dude. There's a great scene in the movie Orange County (Colin Hanks, Jack Black, others) where the main character, a high school senior, is arguing with his mother, who's worried about the prospect of him leaving home. Shaun: "But I have to go to college." His mother: "Why?!" Shaun: "BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU DO AFTER HIGH SCHOOL." These days, most of us are not going to college to learn anything. We're going because that's what you do after high school.
- ilovecomputers 16y ago
  Your reasoning is based on a movie clip. However, I have a hunch that there are statistics that can back up your claim. My hunch, of course, is based on my current personal experience with undergraduate life, which indeed seems to be a large body of students taking college for the sake of taking college.
- webspiderus 16y ago
  having finished undergrad this June, I completely agree
- Groxx 16y ago
  Backed up by this data:[1] 1960 1981 HS Grads 41.0% 69.7% <4 College 16.5% 32.1% >=4 College 7.7% 17.1% (all numbers are cumulative (college-bound are also HS grads), and for people 25+ years old from the entire population) A higher percentage graduated college in 1981 than entered college in 1960. A person was twice as likely to enter college. Meanwhile, in 2009, we had:[2] HS Grads 86.7% Some College 55.6% Associates+ 38.5% Higher degrees 29.5% (I separated Associates, as I believe those are often <4 years, but just to include it. Same data set & methods.) Not directly comparable, I'll grant you. But the trend continues. Assuming Bachelors+ == 4 years or more, nearly as many people had 4 years or more as entered college in 1981. And look: the college-entry rate has nearly doubled again. Even with grade inflation, I'd say things are improving overall, despite (because of?) the lowered hours. [1]: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/p20-390/tab-11.pdf http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/p20-390/t... (contains more years + more data) [2]: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/education/cps2009.html http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/education/cps20... ("both sexes" excel link)
greenlblue 16y ago
I don't know if it's true for others but I could have skipped high school and college and I would have missed absolutely nothing in terms of knowledge acquired during those years. I don't think my sentiments deviate too much from the norm. Knowledge these days is much more decentralized and more readily available and if you want to learn something then you don't really need a classroom or a professor to do it. My suspicion is that more and more students are actually pursuing their real passions simply because it is more accessible and consequently they are spending less time on boring class material but are just going through the motions to get a piece of paper.
- yesimahuman 16y ago
  Well I certainly can't say the same. I don't know about you but I find it very, very hard to actually learn something (rather than read about it once on Wikipedia) that isn't programming related, computer related or job related, unless I'm forced to sit down and study it every week (as in school).
  - greenlblue 16y ago
    My point exactly. It just seems backwards to force feed people information if they are not motivated to actually learn it so it shouldn't be surprising that people are studying less now that they have ways to pursue other activities. There is no way you are going to get anything meaningful out of something if the only motivator is punishment in the form of a lower GPA. On the other hand, if you are actually interested in learning something because you want to learn it then the knowledge you gain automatically spills over into other areas and your knowledge grows organically and not according to some template designed by a committee.
    - yesimahuman 16y ago
      I don't agree. I don't think school is punishment. GPAs are just an unfortunate element of the education system. I learned so many things in college that I didn't want to learn at first. But I'm glad they sat me down and made me learn it because I realize how ignorant I was. IMO, the biggest problem facing the world right now is ignorance. What do I offer society by only learning about my interests (in my case, software development)? In the future, what will I offer young people and my children, if I only have knowledge of my niche?
binspace 16y ago
There may also be less perceived benefit to studying compared with other activities, such as interacting and collaborating with the broader world. Oh, the horror!
theprodigy 16y ago
I honestly think students study less because we can get away with it. We can study less get a little above average on tests and with grading on a curve you can get a decent grade. Add to that a lot of students have a lot of fun alternatives to do with that extra time, ie party, hang out with friends, try to get girls, pursue other hobbies and passions.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
College is becoming worth more as a credential than as education. This is unfortunate because it means that students will be less discriminating about the quality of their education, causing the quality of education to diminish. Additionally, students will increasingly care more about merely earning the piece of paper and will be encouraged to take any shortcut possible, including cheating, to obtain a degree. Additionally, young adults (18-25 year olds) are not expected to be as mature as they would have been say 20 or 40 years ago. Many students view college as a burdensome extension of high-school, they see the student-teacher relationship as an inferior/dominant relationship rather than closer to the peer relationship it should be. They see education as something they need to do rather than as an opportunity to enlighten themselves. They are increasingly enthused by the prospect of receiving a shoddy rubber-stamp education rather than appalled that they are receiving so little educational value from their dollars (also partly because perhaps increasingly it isn't their dollars any more). The combination of this and the above is absolutely poisonous to the quality of higher education.
known 16y ago
Traditionally education system has been creating employees. Time to change that to create employers.
monological 16y ago
Because they're lazy and they've been given everything on a silver platter. I'm 24.
alanh 16y ago
Since when has it been acceptable to use anonymous and pseudonymous comments on another site as the primary basis of an article published by a major magazine?

24 points by jamesbritt 16y ago

Many of these theories fall back to one root cause--universities can't scale to meet the demand for university education. Consider: adjust faculty are the result of a supply/demand mismatch between Ph.D's and professorships; competition for tenure (or even adjunct positions) makes course evaluations more important to game, and thus grade inflation and smaller assignments became the expectation; this same competition makes it even more important to publish; undergraduate enrollment has outpaced scholarship availability requiring more students to work. This covers four out of eight causes (even five, if you consider "grades becoming less important than activities" to be a consequence of grade inflation).

kd0amg 16y ago

Slightly off-topic, but... The University of California study finds that the average student at a four-year college in 1961 studied about 24 hours a week. Today’s average student hits the books for just 14 hours. As I was nearing the end of high school, everyone was telling me that in college, I would probably have to do two hours of studying for every one hour of class. 12 hours of class (one for each two of the 24 hours spent studying) seems like an unusually light course load to me (and it was the minimum for maintaining full-time status), so I'm inclined to doubt that that ratio was the norm then. Where did this two-per-one norm come from?

elai 16y ago
You can do that if you want straight As!
- Groxx 16y ago
  You can do that if you want an aneurysm! http://thereifixedit.com/ http://thereifixedit.com/ edit: disclaimer: I had a 21 credit semester. Not recommended.

zbanks 16y ago

Did these studies ever show a decline in grades? If grades stayed (relatively) the same, or even increased, then the lack of studying shouldn't be a problem. Either kids are smarter, or the courses aren't forcing them to study as much. In this latter case, it is the professors to blame, not the kids. Granted, all these only come out if the grades did not decline significantly.

philk 16y ago
This is confounded somewhat by the problem of grade inflation. I suppose another way to measure would be figuring out if we're getting more useful graduates but I can't think of how to measure that (apart from perhaps average increase in wages).
ilovecomputers 16y ago
I've had courses that have challenged me to study because either the topic was difficult or the professor was a researching mathematician who rambled in lecture. However this article made me notice of a trend of having less free time: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/04/what_happened_to_studying/?page=full http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/04/... Personally, the culture outside of the classroom was that you had to be involved in many different things: work, clubs, career building, etc. Like studying itself would not make you a successful person. Is this forcing professors to make me study less? Am I gaining less knowledge because of it? I wish I knew, but I'm too busy studying to know ;) EDIT: Well to be honest, too busy surfing the internet instead of studying. Yes it's an addiction and an uphill battle to fight it, but it beats being addicted to WOW like my previous roommate. At least I have a small insight into the thinking of entrepreneur-ing hackers.

Towle_ 16y ago

NONE of those theories are the reason. And frankly, I find it worrisome none of these guys can even come close. Studying methods becoming more efficient? C'mon, dude. There's a great scene in the movie Orange County (Colin Hanks, Jack Black, others) where the main character, a high school senior, is arguing with his mother, who's worried about the prospect of him leaving home. Shaun: "But I have to go to college." His mother: "Why?!" Shaun: "BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU DO AFTER HIGH SCHOOL." These days, most of us are not going to college to learn anything. We're going because that's what you do after high school.

ilovecomputers 16y ago
Your reasoning is based on a movie clip. However, I have a hunch that there are statistics that can back up your claim. My hunch, of course, is based on my current personal experience with undergraduate life, which indeed seems to be a large body of students taking college for the sake of taking college.
webspiderus 16y ago
having finished undergrad this June, I completely agree
Groxx 16y ago
Backed up by this data:[1] 1960 1981 HS Grads 41.0% 69.7% <4 College 16.5% 32.1% >=4 College 7.7% 17.1% (all numbers are cumulative (college-bound are also HS grads), and for people 25+ years old from the entire population) A higher percentage graduated college in 1981 than entered college in 1960. A person was twice as likely to enter college. Meanwhile, in 2009, we had:[2] HS Grads 86.7% Some College 55.6% Associates+ 38.5% Higher degrees 29.5% (I separated Associates, as I believe those are often <4 years, but just to include it. Same data set & methods.) Not directly comparable, I'll grant you. But the trend continues. Assuming Bachelors+ == 4 years or more, nearly as many people had 4 years or more as entered college in 1981. And look: the college-entry rate has nearly doubled again. Even with grade inflation, I'd say things are improving overall, despite (because of?) the lowered hours. [1]: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/p20-390/tab-11.pdf http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/p20-390/t... (contains more years + more data) [2]: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/education/cps2009.html http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/education/cps20... ("both sexes" excel link)

greenlblue 16y ago

I don't know if it's true for others but I could have skipped high school and college and I would have missed absolutely nothing in terms of knowledge acquired during those years. I don't think my sentiments deviate too much from the norm. Knowledge these days is much more decentralized and more readily available and if you want to learn something then you don't really need a classroom or a professor to do it. My suspicion is that more and more students are actually pursuing their real passions simply because it is more accessible and consequently they are spending less time on boring class material but are just going through the motions to get a piece of paper.

yesimahuman 16y ago
Well I certainly can't say the same. I don't know about you but I find it very, very hard to actually learn something (rather than read about it once on Wikipedia) that isn't programming related, computer related or job related, unless I'm forced to sit down and study it every week (as in school).
- greenlblue 16y ago
  My point exactly. It just seems backwards to force feed people information if they are not motivated to actually learn it so it shouldn't be surprising that people are studying less now that they have ways to pursue other activities. There is no way you are going to get anything meaningful out of something if the only motivator is punishment in the form of a lower GPA. On the other hand, if you are actually interested in learning something because you want to learn it then the knowledge you gain automatically spills over into other areas and your knowledge grows organically and not according to some template designed by a committee.
  - yesimahuman 16y ago
    I don't agree. I don't think school is punishment. GPAs are just an unfortunate element of the education system. I learned so many things in college that I didn't want to learn at first. But I'm glad they sat me down and made me learn it because I realize how ignorant I was. IMO, the biggest problem facing the world right now is ignorance. What do I offer society by only learning about my interests (in my case, software development)? In the future, what will I offer young people and my children, if I only have knowledge of my niche?

binspace 16y ago

There may also be less perceived benefit to studying compared with other activities, such as interacting and collaborating with the broader world. Oh, the horror!

theprodigy 16y ago

I honestly think students study less because we can get away with it. We can study less get a little above average on tests and with grading on a curve you can get a decent grade. Add to that a lot of students have a lot of fun alternatives to do with that extra time, ie party, hang out with friends, try to get girls, pursue other hobbies and passions.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

College is becoming worth more as a credential than as education. This is unfortunate because it means that students will be less discriminating about the quality of their education, causing the quality of education to diminish. Additionally, students will increasingly care more about merely earning the piece of paper and will be encouraged to take any shortcut possible, including cheating, to obtain a degree. Additionally, young adults (18-25 year olds) are not expected to be as mature as they would have been say 20 or 40 years ago. Many students view college as a burdensome extension of high-school, they see the student-teacher relationship as an inferior/dominant relationship rather than closer to the peer relationship it should be. They see education as something they need to do rather than as an opportunity to enlighten themselves. They are increasingly enthused by the prospect of receiving a shoddy rubber-stamp education rather than appalled that they are receiving so little educational value from their dollars (also partly because perhaps increasingly it isn't their dollars any more). The combination of this and the above is absolutely poisonous to the quality of higher education.

known 16y ago

Traditionally education system has been creating employees. Time to change that to create employers.

monological 16y ago

Because they're lazy and they've been given everything on a silver platter. I'm 24.

alanh 16y ago

Since when has it been acceptable to use anonymous and pseudonymous comments on another site as the primary basis of an article published by a major magazine?