4 ms·

> most students are overcommitted; college is expensive, so they need good grades for a good return on their investment; and AI is everywhere, including the pos

by aydyn 1y ago

> most students are overcommitted; college is expensive, so they need good grades for a good return on their investment; and AI is everywhere, including the post-college workforce. Yeah. Overcommitted to partying and skipping class. Has this author ever been to an average American university?

DeepYogurt 1y ago
Speak for yourself maybe
- aydyn 1y ago
  Speaking for myself, has the author ever been to an average American university?
  - DaSHacka 1y ago
    I have, I'd recommended speaking for yourself
    - aydyn 1y ago
      Cool, but has the author?
  - warmedcookie 1y ago
    Heh, especially the non-major freshman classes. A few weeks in and half the seats are empty compared to the first day of class.
bluefirebrand 1y ago
Overcommitted in this context probably means "has a schedule that is packed too full" Between work and school and other responsibilities they have no time to decompress so they burn out
- yoz-y 1y ago
  The only time I’ve had as much free time as in university was in my first job.
  - airstrike 1y ago
    Since you said "in university" I assume that wasn't in the U.S.
    - yoz-y 1y ago
      No not in the US.
lynndotpy 1y ago
What people are telling you in the comments is that your perspective is not universal. I've personally only ever skipped one class in my time in undergrad (as an American at an American university), and not for a party. I'm not a special case or anything, those classes are very expensive!
- hollandheese 1y ago
  You are much closer to a special case than you think. Average attendance in my and my colleagues Math 101 classes is around 30% by mid semester.
  - jncfhnb 1y ago
    i would guess math 101 to be the least attended class across the board though
    - pessimizer 1y ago
      Isn't it basically a remedial class, or rather a class for people who did the minimum of HS math? I would expect it to be filled with more partiers than studiers, and also that plenty of the people in it would already know a lot of the material that's covered (so why not ditch?)
      - hollandheese 1y ago
        >plenty of the people in it would already know a lot of the material that's covered (so why not ditch?) Their test scores show that they don't already know a lot of the material that's covered. >Isn't it basically a remedial class, or rather a class for people who did the minimum of HS math? It's College Algebra (or the non-trig part of Precalculus).
        jncfhnb 1y ago
        I’d have to imagine that very few people in that class want to take it or have any intention of doing more math than the minimum requirement.
hansvm 1y ago
Let's rephrase it to "most of even the best students" then. I went to about the cheapest US school that had a decent math program. It costs $17,500/yr between tuition, rent, books, and rice and beans. That's a lot of money. It's over $10/hr in pre-tax income, even if you work full-time all year, which isn't an easy bar to clear in the sort of towns with cheaper universities. Wages don't scale well enough with more expensive tuition for there to be substantially better options. Classes are another 22+ hours each week (you could complete school in 3-4 yrs instead, but that makes it even harder to afford and doesn't really reduce the workload enough to make a difference, however I'll also factor in a 15-hour workload later). The rule of thumb is that you should study 3 hours for every hour of class. I found that approximately correct. Some classes took a lot less. Some took a little more. Combined with the self study you need in adjacent topics, 3hrs is a fair bit low. During the school year then, you have something that looks like a 128hr/week schedule, or 100hr if you're finishing in 4yrs, and still 60hr/week even if you're finishing in 4yrs and racking up $70k in debt. Don't get me wrong; I had free time (I worked more during the summer, less during the school year, allowing loans to cover the slack, which bought extra time here and there), but it wasn't exactly a party either. When I skipped class it was because I had to work, had to study for some other more pressing class, or found it more efficient to study the book than to try to understand that particular lecturer.
- aydyn 1y ago
  > The rule of thumb is that you should study 3 hours for every hour of class. I found that approximately correct. Some classes took a lot less. Some took a little more. lol stop the cap. Its more like 0.5 hours of grand total work for every hour of scheduled class, since most kids are skipping 50% of the classes and using "chat" (a really fetch name for a new digital drug btw) to make up the rest. College is just a hoop, remember?
- seanmcdirmid 1y ago
  This matched my experience 30 years ago. Work 20 hours a week, but tuition and living expenses were a lot cheaper back then ($215-$330/month for a room! $900/quarter tuition). The 3 hour for every 1 hour of class is especially true for computer science, and skipping class in favor of self study worked well if the lecturer was really bad. Lectures were pretty much bonus reinforcement if useful at all, a lot of what you learned relied on self study. A lot of students didn't do what I did, and they washed out pretty quickly (I had a lot of classmates from HS that didn't last the first quarter). My first quarter was pretty harsh (only got one 4.0, and a 2.7 in a chemistry class I had no reason being in), but I wised up quickly. It was hard going from High school where I could do all my homework in the time between classes, to college where I had to do real actual studying.
lapcat 1y ago
It me. But I read an article recently about the death of partying in the USA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44514550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44514550
__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
I've been taking one class at a time for the last six years at what I think is an average American university. The twenty somethings that your comment is aimed at have been my lab partners and such. You're describing maybe 10% of them. As a group they're all over the map. As learning goes, I'd say anybody taking more than two classes at a time is overcommitted. They might manage to get A's but I speak with these students about the courses we took together a year or two after the fact and it's clear to me that taking four or five classes at once is an awful strategy for retention.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

by aydyn 1y ago

DeepYogurt 1y ago

Speak for yourself maybe

aydyn 1y ago
Speaking for myself, has the author ever been to an average American university?
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  I have, I'd recommended speaking for yourself
  - aydyn 1y ago
    Cool, but has the author?
- warmedcookie 1y ago
  Heh, especially the non-major freshman classes. A few weeks in and half the seats are empty compared to the first day of class.

bluefirebrand 1y ago

Overcommitted in this context probably means "has a schedule that is packed too full" Between work and school and other responsibilities they have no time to decompress so they burn out

yoz-y 1y ago
The only time I’ve had as much free time as in university was in my first job.
- airstrike 1y ago
  Since you said "in university" I assume that wasn't in the U.S.
  - yoz-y 1y ago
    No not in the US.

lynndotpy 1y ago

What people are telling you in the comments is that your perspective is not universal. I've personally only ever skipped one class in my time in undergrad (as an American at an American university), and not for a party. I'm not a special case or anything, those classes are very expensive!

hollandheese 1y ago
You are much closer to a special case than you think. Average attendance in my and my colleagues Math 101 classes is around 30% by mid semester.
- jncfhnb 1y ago
  i would guess math 101 to be the least attended class across the board though
  - pessimizer 1y ago
    Isn't it basically a remedial class, or rather a class for people who did the minimum of HS math? I would expect it to be filled with more partiers than studiers, and also that plenty of the people in it would already know a lot of the material that's covered (so why not ditch?)
    - hollandheese 1y ago
      >plenty of the people in it would already know a lot of the material that's covered (so why not ditch?) Their test scores show that they don't already know a lot of the material that's covered. >Isn't it basically a remedial class, or rather a class for people who did the minimum of HS math? It's College Algebra (or the non-trig part of Precalculus).
      - jncfhnb 1y ago
        I’d have to imagine that very few people in that class want to take it or have any intention of doing more math than the minimum requirement.

hansvm 1y ago

Let's rephrase it to "most of even the best students" then. I went to about the cheapest US school that had a decent math program. It costs $17,500/yr between tuition, rent, books, and rice and beans. That's a lot of money. It's over $10/hr in pre-tax income, even if you work full-time all year, which isn't an easy bar to clear in the sort of towns with cheaper universities. Wages don't scale well enough with more expensive tuition for there to be substantially better options. Classes are another 22+ hours each week (you could complete school in 3-4 yrs instead, but that makes it even harder to afford and doesn't really reduce the workload enough to make a difference, however I'll also factor in a 15-hour workload later). The rule of thumb is that you should study 3 hours for every hour of class. I found that approximately correct. Some classes took a lot less. Some took a little more. Combined with the self study you need in adjacent topics, 3hrs is a fair bit low. During the school year then, you have something that looks like a 128hr/week schedule, or 100hr if you're finishing in 4yrs, and still 60hr/week even if you're finishing in 4yrs and racking up $70k in debt. Don't get me wrong; I had free time (I worked more during the summer, less during the school year, allowing loans to cover the slack, which bought extra time here and there), but it wasn't exactly a party either. When I skipped class it was because I had to work, had to study for some other more pressing class, or found it more efficient to study the book than to try to understand that particular lecturer.

aydyn 1y ago
> The rule of thumb is that you should study 3 hours for every hour of class. I found that approximately correct. Some classes took a lot less. Some took a little more. lol stop the cap. Its more like 0.5 hours of grand total work for every hour of scheduled class, since most kids are skipping 50% of the classes and using "chat" (a really fetch name for a new digital drug btw) to make up the rest. College is just a hoop, remember?
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
This matched my experience 30 years ago. Work 20 hours a week, but tuition and living expenses were a lot cheaper back then ($215-$330/month for a room! $900/quarter tuition). The 3 hour for every 1 hour of class is especially true for computer science, and skipping class in favor of self study worked well if the lecturer was really bad. Lectures were pretty much bonus reinforcement if useful at all, a lot of what you learned relied on self study. A lot of students didn't do what I did, and they washed out pretty quickly (I had a lot of classmates from HS that didn't last the first quarter). My first quarter was pretty harsh (only got one 4.0, and a 2.7 in a chemistry class I had no reason being in), but I wised up quickly. It was hard going from High school where I could do all my homework in the time between classes, to college where I had to do real actual studying.

lapcat 1y ago

It me. But I read an article recently about the death of partying in the USA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44514550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44514550

__MatrixMan__ 1y ago

I've been taking one class at a time for the last six years at what I think is an average American university. The twenty somethings that your comment is aimed at have been my lab partners and such. You're describing maybe 10% of them. As a group they're all over the map. As learning goes, I'd say anybody taking more than two classes at a time is overcommitted. They might manage to get A's but I speak with these students about the courses we took together a year or two after the fact and it's clear to me that taking four or five classes at once is an awful strategy for retention.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]