College students spend less and less time studying, leisure time on the rise
econ.ucsb.edu
econ.ucsb.edu
Of course fullness of libraries might discourage some students from studying, which in turn affects the statistics.
Also, "school summer" in my original comment indicates that my prospects are dim.
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.
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.
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-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.)
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.
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.
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.
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 Marks: 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.
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?"?
Daddy already paid you loads and loads of money! How is it that you expect me to make, like... an honest effort? Yeah, whatever.
The article may be right or wrong, but you are so above it to discuss it in its own merits. No, you paid your money, so you must get your cheese, right? Sorry to let you down, son, but the thing they use in the MATRIX to download skills into a living brain do not exist. It is Science Fiction, it will never be true. You would know that if you grabbed a few damned books and read 'em.
And just for the record, I am not old enough to have forgot about all the hours that I wasted while in undergraduate school. At least I did never go crying to the principal office to complain that i did not get the grades i "deserved".
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.
On the other hand, as a family and career man I find I have even less free time than I did in university.
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.
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-
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...
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.
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.
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 (gmap)
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.