When asked how much homework college students must do to complete their course assignments successfully, college teachers generally set the bar at around 25 hours per week. But in the last National Survey of Student Engagement, which I linked to in the previous post, few students came close to the minimum. On the question, “Hours per 7-day week spent preparing for class (studying, reading, writing, doing homework or lab work, analyzing data, rehearsing, and other academic activities,” here is how first-year students came out:

1-5 hours 17 percent 6-10 hours 26 percent 11-15 hours 20 percent 16-20 hours 16 percent

In fact, only 11 percent exceeded 25 hours per week. This means that nearly two-thirds of first-years come in at two hours a day or less, or, if they have a four-course load, a half-hour or less a day on each one. Add their in-class time and it equals a part-time job.

Now, we might think that a lot of these students drop out, or that freshman courses aren’t as demanding as upper-division courses, and so we should expect homework hours to rise with later years (sophomore, junior, senior). And the study hours of seniors do go up — but not by much. Not much at all. Seniors logged pretty much the same rates as first-years except that they improved a couple of percentage points up the hour scale.

So, even though seniors have a personal and/or career interest in their classes, more than half of them give those classes a half-effort. That may explain why NSSE reports also that one in five students, freshmen and seniors, admit coming to class frequently without having read the day’s material. Plus, they claim that they still receive lots of A grades in those classes.

Those two findings point the blame away from the kids and toward the teachers. As the head of NSSE stated to USA Today, “The purpose here is not to dump on faculty, but when a substantial chunk of students come to class unprepared, it suggests that they can get away with it.” It suggests, too, that college teachers are facing a problem previously limited to pre-college classrooms, namely, not only the ordinary knowledge and skill deficiencies of teens, but a disengagement from course content and from teachers themselves. Even though college enrollment is voluntary and often costly, it doesn’t guarantee motivation. Teachers now must consider student habits as well as student minds, and create activities accordingly, such as required student conferences and small daily homework assignments. Yeah, it’s an extra burden, and it would be nice if all the kids were eager and on-task. But they’re not, increasingly so.