I pay attention when the general public is told something about higher ed. I am an educational psychologist so the topics are sometimes relevant to my teaching or research. I also am interested in how the area in which I work is presented to the public.
In 1961, the average full-time student at a four-year college in the United States studied about twenty- four hours per week, while his modern counterpart puts in only fourteen hours per week.
In mid-summer, the results of a research study by Babcock & Marks (prepublication PDF) received general attention. This does not happen often. The lead sentence from the abstract appears above. The amount of time college students spend studying has declined dramatically. (BTW – the authors use the word “curmudgeon” in the first paragraph of their article. How often does that happen?). The authors examine and reject some possible explanations. For example, technology does not appear to have made students more efficient learners. Only a fraction of the decline can be attributed to a higher proportion of college students who work.
So even though we lack the data to observe directly whether college has been “dumbed down,” we are able to draw from the data a solid conclusion about university practices: standards for effort have plummeted—in practice, if not in word.
I think their conclusion translates as – whatever has changed on the instructional side, college profs have lowered standards resulting in less student effort.
Now, this could have been the end of this story (and my post) – BUT NO!
UND, my institution, topped one of the lists generated by the Princeton Review. We are #1. We are #1. We study the least. Wait, this may not be a good thing. Just so those in the area do not scoff. We are also the only ND school Princeton Review considers for any ranking.
So, studying is declining. This decline may indicate a lowering of standards. UND students study the least. I am not sure I like where this logic exercise is going.
This topic (the general finding, not the UND data point) has generated a good deal of discussion and analysis.
Boston Globe
Atlantic Wire
Mother Jones
I do think this should be treated as a serious topic (generally and locally). I am not a big fan of survey data – participants can exaggerate or give answers to create an impression. Is indicating you don’t study much at your school fall within the same category as bragging that you school is a great party school?
Here is my take (no data here) as a prof. I think profs are pressured from two directions. First, there is the “I don’t want to buy and then read that expensive and large book” complaint. This is student pressure. Then there is the colleague pressure (with support from some students) that condemns lecturing as boring and passive. We should expect students to read and then discuss and explore in class. The combination may be deadly. If there is a resistance to reading and there is a resistance to presenting what you have left is discussion of personal opinions. We used to call this shooting the bull (not sure why – I did attend a land grant college) and it was what you did after studying when you walked to the campus town bar for a nightcap. I tend to think of a heavy emphasis on class discussion as “studying with your students”. This is not necessarily a bad thing if students come to class with something to study. Perhaps out of class and in class studying should be combined as a single variable. But, just what would be the focus of such effort?
I really hope this topic receives more attention. … enough of this writing stuff, back to reading the student’s book for the semester. …bah
[Cross posted from Curmudgeon Speaks]
