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From the issue dated December 6, 2002
Homework? What Homework?
By JEFFREY R. YOUNG
During a recent class session of "Strategies for College
Success" at the"Say a prayer -- that's what I do," said one
student. Another suggested eating peanut butter or other brain
foods. A third said she unwinds by listening to Enya the night
before.
The tip given most consistently by professors and college
officials is that students should simply do their homework.
The most commonly prescribed amount is at least two hours of
class preparation for every hour spent in the classroom --
meaning 25 to 30 hours a week for a typical full-time student.
The idea is that students should consider college their
full-time job, and that class time and preparation should take
about 40 hours each week. That's long been the conventional
wisdom.
But many students across the country say they don't come close
to following that study regimen. Results from the latest
National Survey of Student Engagement, released last month,
found that only 12 percent of last year's freshmen at
four-year residential colleges reported spending 26 or more
hours per week preparing for classes, while the majority, 63
percent, said they spend 15 or fewer hours on class
preparation, which the survey defines as "studying, reading,
writing, rehearsing, and other activities related to your
academic program."
"Students are studying about one-third as much as faculty say
they ought to, to do well," said George D. Kuh, director of
the survey and a professor of higher education at Indiana
University at Bloomington.
The most striking statistic: Nineteen percent of full-time
freshmen say they spend only 1 to 5 hours per week preparing
for classes. Many education experts say that is well below the
minimum needed to succeed. And seniors who answered the same
survey reported studying even less than freshmen, with 20
percent studying 1 to 5 hours per week.
Are students today studying less than those of past
generations? It's difficult to say, in part because the
student-engagement survey, the most comprehensive source of
data on the topic, is only three years old.
But a look at student study habits on a few residential
campuses confirms, albeit largely anecdotally, that students
are not spending much time studying. And many professors say
their students are doing less homework these days, though
there are always a few model students. The problem may start
in high school, where students are apparently spending far
less time on homework than those who graduated a decade ago.
Some researchers say professors may be partly to blame for
students' poor homework habits because they have lowered the
bar for what they accept as passing work. And some professors
may even assign fewer papers than they did in the past, so
they won't have to spend as much time on grading. But
professors say that too many of their students are too focused
on grades rather than on learning.
"I am concerned about how little time students are spending in
the academic enterprise," said John Gardner, executive
director at Brevard College's Policy Center on the First Year
of College. "That really troubles me."
Range of Habits
On a recent Thursday afternoon at the University of Maryland
at College Park, two students in the food court erupted in
laughter when asked if they spend 25 hours a week studying.
"Oh, my God, not even," said Melissa Kim, a senior majoring in
biology. She guessed that maybe "one in a million" studied
that much. "They're the ones who can't lead a normal life."
She said she spends just a few hours preparing for classes
during a typical week.
Her friend, Ali Forghani, said he spends just two hours
studying most weeks, but that he crams as much as 20 hours
during exams. He said he has a 3.0 grade-point average. "I'm
trying to go to dental school," he said, "so I don't want my
grades to be worse than they are."
At a nearby bus stop, Lisa James, a junior majoring in family
studies, said she spends about 10 hours a week studying, which
she considers a typical college workload. Jaydutt Shukla, a
sophomore, said he spends at least 20 hours each week
studying, including about 10 hours writing programs for his
computer-science courses.
"Our 10-year average is 14.8 hours of studying a week," said
Marcy Fallon, director of Maryland's Learning Assistance
Service, part of the university's counseling center. She said
that she's not sure if 25 hours was ever the norm for students
at Maryland or anywhere else.
"It's something we still preach, but have I ever met a student
who does it? Probably not," Ms. Fallon said. "As much as we
preach it, they're not doing it."
Ms. Fallon said she worries most about the students she
encounters taking four or five courses, but who study only six
to 10 hours per week. "That's a problem," she said. "You're
clearly not doing what you need to do to be fully effective."
But the sheer number of hours spent buried in books is not as
important as whether students know how to manage their time
and get the most out of their studying. "I like to say,
'Reading does not equal learning,'" said Ms. Fallon. "You've
got to do something more with that by working with the
material on a day-to-day basis."
Bruce W. Tuckman, a professor of educational policy at Ohio
State University, agreed. He has had students create detailed
logs of their study time.
"Mostly they discover that they spend a lot of time that
doesn't add up to anything," Mr. Tuckman said, noting that the
biggest problem for students is procrastination. "It's not
that they don't study enough, but they don't study well."
Most students, however, are never taught how to study. "We
call it the hidden curriculum," said Ms. Fallon. "It's the
thing that we sort of expect that teachers are teaching, but
are they really doing it?"
Less Preparation
Poor study habits seem to start in high school.
That was the case for Billy Goodner, a junior majoring in
mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, who was hard
at work at the main library on a recent Friday afternoon.
"I study a lot," he said, estimating that he spends 40 hours a
week on homework. But in high school, things were different.
"I didn't work at all in high school -- the mind-set back then
was just different," he said. "I wasn't prepared for the sheer
amount of work that has to be done for every class in
college."
A national study based on a survey of first-year students,
"The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 2001," shows
that time spent studying in high school has steadily dropped
since 1987, when questions about the topic were first used. In
1987, about 53 percent of students reported spending fewer
than 6 hours per week on homework and studying, while in 2001,
that number jumped to 65 percent.
"There's been a definite decline over time in the amount of
time students are spending studying or doing homework" in high
school, said Linda J. Sax, director of the survey and head of
the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of
California at Los Angeles.
Curiously, these same students' high-school grades are "higher
than ever," she said. In turn, students feel entitled to good
grades when they do the same amount of work in college.
That troubles Ms. Sax. "Students are becoming more
professionally oriented," she said. "We're seeing growing
numbers of students who are concerned with college as a means
to an end -- getting into a good graduate school or getting a
good job. Even my students, they calculate, 'If in-class
discussion is 10 percent [of my grade], is it really worth my
time to participate in class?' It's a calculated decision
about how much effort to put in."
John Janovoy Jr, a professor of biological sciences who has
taught for more than 25 years, said he's seen a similar trend
among his students. "Careerism is absolutely rampant in higher
education today," he said. "Kids are coming to school better
prepared to try to make good grades" rather than explore new
topics.
Puffed-up grades, some suggest, has aggravated students'
attitudes about their studies.
"Grade inflation makes a student think it's difficult to
tolerate a bad grade or two," said Harvey C. Mansfield, a
Harvard University professor of government who has been a
vocal critic of grade inflation. "Students start looking
around at ways to keep their records pure and intact."
At Harvard, for instance, he sees students taking more "gut"
courses -- ones widely known by students to require less work
for an easy A. "It's become more respectable to take such
courses," Mr. Mansfield said. "Previously students were sort
of embarrassed. ... It's certainly my impression here that
students are working less hard than they used to."
At the same time, however, students are more active in
extracurricular activities than ever.
"Life seems to be getting more and more complex for many of
them," said Edith O. Kochenour, director of
learning-enhancement programs for the University of Utah. "The
pressures of having a family, having a job, and going to
school are really taking a toll on many students."
Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the
Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, said that nearly
two-thirds of all college students now hold jobs while
enrolled.
"More students are working more hours than ever [in jobs], and
as far as I know there are still only 24 hours in a day --
though a lot of students try to stretch that," Mr. Mortenson
said.
For instance, Lisa Marie Webb, a freshman at Utah, said she
spends more time at her off-campus job as a clerk at ShopKo,
where she works about 35 hours a week, than she does on
homework, and that she needs the money to pay the bills. She
does much of her reading for classes on the bus shuttling
between home, school, and work.
Some educators even posit that students today are so
accustomed to distraction -- and bombardment with media images
-- that they find it harder to concentrate than students in
the past.
"It's a lot of short-attention-span theater," said Chris M.
Golde, a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching. "The next thing that bumps into you
captures your imagination."
'Disengagement Compact'
Students do more work for some courses than for others, and a
major factor seems to be how much their professors push and
inspire them.
Will Imbriale, a sophomore at Boston College, said a
philosophy professor he had last year helped him adjust to
college work. "I got a D on my first philosophy paper," said
Mr. Imbriale, who added that he now studies more than 20 hours
per week. "That woke me up, big time."
He said he worked harder for that course than for others, and
that he got an A- on his final philosophy paper: "I felt like
I earned that. He gave me a sense of achievement. He made me
want to understand."
But not every professor pushes students. Mr. Imbriale said
that only two out of five of his current professors challenge
him.
Mr. Kuh, who directs the student-engagement survey, said that
some professors view the time spent grading papers and writing
copious notes in the margins of student work as a distraction
from their research and other scholarly activities. In turn,
some professors have reduced the amount of work they assign.
"There's an emerging compact between faculty members and
students which goes something like, 'If you don't bother me
too much, I won't bother you too much -- I'll trade you a B if
you trade me some piece of mind,'" said Mr. Kuh, who calls it
the "disengagement compact."
Mr. Gardner, of Brevard College, agreed. "I believe today that
many of us on the faculty are asking less of students than we
were 35 or 40 years ago," he said. "We give them less to read,
we give them less to write, we test them less frequently."
The student-engagement survey found that 58 percent of
freshmen and 49 percent of seniors reported doing four or
fewer papers of 5 to 19 pages in length per academic year. And
52 percent of freshmen and 58 percent of seniors said they are
asked to read 10 or fewer books per academic year.
The survey data has left many administrators wondering what
should be done, if anything, to encourage students to study
more.
Some officials say colleges should try to engage students and
persuade them to study in earnest.
One suggestion is to expand study-skills courses like the ones
at Utah. The university does not require the courses --
they're worth three credits -- but officials strongly promote
them at freshman orientations.
Mr. Tuckman, of Ohio State University, said he has spent the
last five years developing an innovative study-skills course
that the university has expanded to 1,000 students in the
current academic year
(http://all.successcenter.ohio-state.edu/). By getting
students to make daily "to-do" lists and to improve their
time-management skills, he said, students in his courses have
raised their grade-point averages by an average of five-tenths
of a point, or half a letter grade.
Mr. Gardner said that colleges should do more to emphasize
academics in their brochures, during campus tours, and in
freshman-orientation sessions. "The overwhelming emphasis of a
lot of that [promotional] literature is, 'If you come here,
you're going to have the time of your life,'" he said. "It's
not very common to have visiting students actually interact
with faculty or sit in on classes."
One positive change in recent years, he said, is the emergence
of college-orientation programs that require entering students
to read a common book and discuss it in organized sessions
before classes begin. "I don't see it as a panacea, but at
least it is a way to offer a little bit of balance for the way
we present the college experience," he said.
Some student groups, including fraternities and sororities,
sponsor regular study halls or require students to study a
certain amount. Meanwhile, some universities are asking
students to promise to be more studious: Old Dominion
University, for example, has set aside one residence hall for
freshmen where students sign a contract stating they will
study at least 12 hours a week.
Perhaps a more realistic response is to simply lower
expectations, so that they more closely comport with campus
reality. The 25-hour rule of thumb, it seems, is history.
"The old standard of two hours outside of class for every hour
in class was a product of a time in which most in-class time
was devoted to lectures and most out-of-class time was spent
in reading, memorization of facts/ideas, and writing
traditional papers," said Nelson E. Bingham in an e-mail
interview. Bingham is a professor of psychology and assistant
to the president for enrollment management at Earlham College.
"It might be time for academe to think about revising the
standard."
Even Mr. Imbriale, the Boston College student who toils more
than the average on his homework, said that the standard
assumes "kind of an ideal world where each student is going to
spend very little time socializing and very little time
watching TV."
"The distractions of college kind of drag you away from what
you should be doing if it was an ideal world."
KICKING THE STUDY HABIT
Most college freshmen say they spent five or fewer hours
studying per week as high-school seniors -- and the share who
spent more time than that studying has diminished in recent
years.
Number of hours per week high-school seniors spent studying,
2001
Proportion of high-school seniors who studied six or more
hourse per week, selected years
College students spent more time studying than they did in
high school, but they still studied far fewer hours than
recommended, and the proportion who studied 11 or more hours
per week has declined in the past two years.
Proportion of college seniors who spent the following number
of hours preparing for class* per week
Note: Figures are rounded
* Defined in the survey as studying, reading, writing,
rehearsing, and other activities related to academic programs.
SOURCE: "The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 2001,"
published by American Council on Education and University of
California at Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute;
National Survey of Student Engagement, Indiana University
6 WAYS FOR COLLEGES TO FOSTER GOOD STUDY HABITS
Researchers recommend the following steps for encouraging more
or better studying by students:
Require students to take study-skills courses or to attend
orientation sessions that emphasize time management.
Involve faculty members in campus tours for prospective
freshmen, to emphasize the importance of academics.
Better reward faculty members for teaching and spending time
with undergraduates.
Provide more financial aid or otherwise encourage students to
work fewer hours in jobs, to allow more time for studies.
Create "learning communities," in which students are placed in
groups of about 25 and share a set of classes to build a
better sense of connection to the university and to academic
work.
Take steps to halt grade inflation.
SOURCE: Chronicle reporting
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Copyright 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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