Posted on 07/04/2010 12:00:53 PM PDT by billorites
They come with polished resumes and perfect SAT scores. Their grades are often impeccable. Some elite universities will deny thousands of high school seniors with 4.0 grade point averages in search of an elusive quality that one provost called “intellectual vitality.” The perception is that today’s over-achieving, college-driven kids have it — whatever it is. They’re not just groomed; they’re ready. There’s just one problem.
Once on campus, the students aren’t studying.
It is a fundamental part of college education: the idea that young people don’t just learn from lectures, but on their own, holed up in the library with books and, perhaps, a trusty yellow highlighter. But new research, conducted by two California economics professors, shows that over the past five decades, the number of hours that the average college student studies each week has been steadily dropping. According to time-use surveys analyzed by professors Philip Babcock, at the University of California Santa Barbara, and Mindy Marks, at the University of California Riverside, 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.
The decline, Babcock and Marks found, infects students of all demographics. No matter the student’s major, gender, or race, no matter the size of the school or the quality of the SAT scores of the people enrolled there, the results are the same: Students of all levels are studying less.
“It’s not just limited to bad schools,” Babcock said. “We’re seeing it at liberal arts colleges, doctoral research colleges, masters colleges. Every different type, every different size. It’s just across the spectrum. It’s very robust. This is just a huge change in every category.”
The research, accepted to be published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, has already sparked discussions...
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
It’s true. Students are not studying nearly as much as they once used to.
A Part Time Employee co-worker, who has his BA and is going for his Masters told me he literally has never read a book that he wasn’t required to read for a course in College.
That is because of several factors.
One is that so many more people “go to college” instead of just the ones that really need to go.
Two is the selfish culture we have spawned in this country through movies and television where college is supposed to be a party.
The dumbing down of society has included the schools and colleges big time.
That's because school is boring.
Our education system does little aside from torturing kids and picking their pockets.
If they had to worry about actually flunking out of college, they’d study harder!
In the old days going to college was an all-around “well rounded” kind of education. I think there are way too many people going to college these days.
Why waste time reading a whole book, when you can Google the answer or get a summary on Wikipedia?
I can tell you one thing that probably makes a difference.
Back when we were in school, we had to type our papers on typewriters, today they have computers. That can make a huge difference, alone.
Don’t know.
I do know that when I did my degrees I spent huge amounts of time on study, explaining to myself, in my own way, what was actually going on. There wasn’t any shortcut that I knew of, and cheating on exams wouldn’t help: you have to be able to do the job.
But then, I’m a grunt engineer, by choice, not a teacher, poly sci type, or liberal arts groupie.
Yeap. You really have to work at it to flunk out.
The real question is: Are the professors providing the impetus to study with the course curriculum? Why study for 24 hours when you only need to study 15 to fulfill the requirements?
Exactly, there was a love of learning, of studying, and contemplating among successful students, now College appears to me to be a drab, barest level of results driven enterprise.
If you find school boring, then you shouldn’t be there.
Many people find tremendous mental stimulation and challenge in learning in college and truly enjoy lifelong learning after classes. My daughter is taking Organic Chemistry this summer and was telling me yesterday how much she enjoys the class and especially using the equipment in the lab. All the pieces of her undergrad career are coming together and she is very enthused about it. I was very happy for her and proud of her.
Indoctrination replaces any need for study.
Make the course challenging enough and they’ll study - or they’ll bail out of it.
They need to look at the material they are teaching ...it is so dummied down you no longer need to study
Look at a 3rd grade reader from the early 20th century and you see challenging material
Farmers with a 3rd grade education read and understood the federalist papers..today college students can not read or grasp the material
The English101 material taught in colleges is grammar and punctuation that I learned in 4th grade...no more syntax’s of sentences just speak however you choose..
I shake my head at some of the grammar on TV news shows..
Students from Japan have already learned in high school what we are teaching in colleges here.. so they come here to play before getting their masters or PHD’s
We are a nation of uneducated people . Thank you DEWEY !
A side effect of grade inflation is that work which would have gotten a C now gets a B, so people who are content with a B can slide by with little work.
“Indoctrination replaces any need for study.”
Succinct, and right on target.
You don’t even have to learn a language just use word translate or google fish
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