Usually when you hear a rant about how the younger generation is less moral or less studious or just generally less awesome than its forebears, it ends up sounding like the crotchety ramblings of a bitter oldster who simultaneously envies and despises the Youth of Today. “Get off my lawn!” and all that.
But, hey, maybe those grumpy fogies have a point. A working paper by two economists found that the amount of time college students spend on academic work has declined sharply in the last few decades.
Here’s what they found: In 1961, the average full-time college student spent 40 hours per week on academic work (that’s time in class and studying). In 2003, it was 27 hours. The authors figure that 21st-century students spend an average of 10 hours fewer every week studying than their 1961 counterparts. Over the course of a four-year college career, that would add up to something like 1,500 fewer hours spent hitting the books.
Now, the economists looked only at students who were graduating in four years, so the difference isn’t caused by more people stretching out their college experience. Also, according to the authors, the difference can’t be explained by the fact that more students have jobs or by the fact that the makeup of the student body has changed since the sixties. From the paper: “The large decline in academic time investment is an important pattern its own right, and one that motivates future research into underlying causes.”
In other words, we don’t know why.
So maybe college students today are lazy. Or classes are a lot easier now. Or students in 1961 were big nerds with nothing better to do than waste their weekends at the library. Other explanations welcome.
(Here’s the abstract for the working paper, which was written by Philip S. Babcock and Mindy Marks. The early data came from 1961 came from a survey called Project Talent while the more recent data came from the National Survey of Student Engagement.)
29 Responses to Why Don’t Students Study Anymore?
aclschron - April 30, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Maybe they’re just smarter than we were back in 1961!
oldcommprof - April 30, 2010 at 3:58 pm
It’s hard to hit the books effectively when you can’t read them due to having spent the previous 15 years watching the boob tube and playing video games.
ihardin - April 30, 2010 at 4:03 pm
No real surprise about that. Could have saved them the time spent. I would only argue that the gap is even larger.Reasons? Several. I had no TV, no stereo, no phone, no computer or the distractions that go with it, no car until my senior year, and no money to spend on eating and drinking out. And I was fairly typical in my dorm (no freddy frat me). My curriculum required about 35-40 percent more cousework than today’s average. My professors gave very few A’s, a few B’s and lots of C’s and D’s. Some of these grades are rare these days. You had to work pretty hard in some courses to approach a B. Smarter? Don’t think so. Softer teachers? Hurts, but it may be so.
carefree1 - April 30, 2010 at 4:10 pm
I agree with # 3. I was too broke to do anything but stay in the dorm and study!CF
rpb1948 - April 30, 2010 at 4:12 pm
The US Selective Service Administration motivated many males to hit the books. Poor grades and flunking out resulted in the loss of the student’s draft deferment.
ksledge - April 30, 2010 at 4:16 pm
I’d say the number of distractions has changed. It has even changed dramatically in the last 10 years! Other reasons: grade inflation (students aren’t as motivated because they can still get As) and having to go to jobs full-time to pay for college (though I know the article said that wasn’t the explanation.)
11888146 - April 30, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Easier to get good grades now, sure. It is also easier to do research. Easier to write on computers than by longhand or with typewriters, where a single revision required lengthy retyping. Photocopy and scanning technologies reduce the time needed to “take notes” from reference materials.I wish my students spent more time studying and learning, but time spent is not a measure of amount accomplished.
hayahways - April 30, 2010 at 4:56 pm
We expect less of college students today. The baccalaureate used to be evidence of the successful completion of a well-rounded, rigorous educational experience. In many instances, it is now a credential that is little more than an expensive high school diploma.
davidbinder - April 30, 2010 at 5:05 pm
“time spent is not a measure of amount accomplished.”I agree, but how do we get the Department of Ed IG to understand that? :-)I think the other posters raise many plausible reasons … to which I would hypothecate a sense of entitlement. But, it would not be wise to underestimate the effect of the draft in 1961 in motivating male students to study and to remain in school. I’d bet male retention is down from the study period as well.I suspect there is no single cause and the effect is the cumulative result of many factors. I’d be curious how consistent is the change across different segments of the student population.
llee611838 - April 30, 2010 at 5:52 pm
It is interesting that people immediately assume that less time studying has to do with less motivated or more distracted students. It is equally possible that studying took more time because of the cumbersome processes involved in fact finding and data manipulating pre-computers. Even though computers existed when I was in college, most libraries were not yet digitized. A student had to look up books in a card catalog, find articles in listed in directories on library book shelves, photocopy or hand copy notes from books. When I was in high school we were trained to write research papers by copying individual notes onto index cards and arrange them before finally typing them– few students were writing on computers and cutting and pasting. In 1961 no student would be using a computer. Any change in text would require retyping an entire page or paper. Footnotes had to be meticulously placed on pages created with manual typewriters. All of these tasks would increase “study” time. They would not necessarily mean that the quality of the 1961 student’s education would be 1,500 more productive compared to a typical student with huge libraries of digitized books, articles and journals only a mouse click away.
stetson - April 30, 2010 at 5:52 pm
We need to remember that “study time” includes time spent doing research and writing papers. When I think of how much time in the 1960s I spent laborious hand-writing notes on cards, typing papers with carbon which required very careful erasing of both (not even white-out at that time), that took so much time than taking notes on my computer and easily editing papers today. And don’t get me (a librarian) started on how long it took to do research when you had to look through years and years of periodical indexes, vs. one search in the databases. In the 1960s we spent so much time because we had to in order to complete the assignments. Betty Johnson
mhigbee - April 30, 2010 at 10:04 pm
The draft was not that high in 1961; the Vietnam war didn’t heat up and require very large forces until 1965 and later, although there was conscription in 1961 (had been since the Korean War).
physicsprof - May 1, 2010 at 9:44 am
Some commenters above explained the drop in study time with the technological advances that make studying more efficient. I have only anecdotal evidence (from myself and many colleagues in my field) but I believe that the level of the knowledge of physics of B.Sc. graduates has dropped significantly compared with 20-30 years ago (showing a triple integral to students who only “mastered” Calculus II is a no-no in general physics classes now). Of course one might argue that students learn more about how to use technology (cellphone videos, playstations, file sharing, etc.) that in the past, and I would take it as an explanation.
nocurving - May 1, 2010 at 10:17 am
Main reason I can see is grade inflation. Most students nowadays know they can get a reasonable grade without much studying. The good ones will still study and work to get that A. Most will just coast and be content with less than an A. Unfortunately, there are a lot that expect a passing grade without much effort and complain at the drop of a hat and by so doing, get what they want. These kids learn to get what they want by bullying early on and the admins at higher eds are doing the same thing the teachers and school officials did at primary/secondary levels by letting them get away with it. Second, distractions. You only have to walk down the hall before a class start and observe the students waiting to get into the classroom/labs. Most of them are either texting or playing games on the phone instead of studying or reading.
11122741 - May 1, 2010 at 10:53 am
Nice try with the technology and computers argument but it is piffle to a great degree. In 1961 I could cut and paste a single letter on a page never mine a line or 2 or a paragraph and I kicked out a first draft right at the typewriter as I do today and physically cut and pasted the corrections and xeroxed the product if the prof was fussy or used the quick draft on scrap paper that gets rewritten when typing just as I do today. Of course I had to go to the computer center to analyze my data and even learn some assembler to write some customized programs as an undergrad and I had to be a lot smarter about how I found the best things to read and in choosng what to read and I had to replace quantity of information with quality (i.e., I had to think). and, Oh!!, I was a liberal art major. I find my current doc students (never mind undergrads) uneducated, illiterate, with very few higher order cognitive skills clutching to their erroneous beliefs and myths that all of their gadgets mean they have to work less and less hard (sort of like the housewife of the 60′s was erroneous led to believe by technologists)and that they actually are better skilled and more capable and knowledge than folks in the old days. A peek should be taken at the research on how technology deskills people and dumbs down their thinking before one idolizes all of those wonderful intellectual working saving devices forgetting of course Einstien’s 99% perspiration maximum. So much of what I see everyday from students and others is “self-medication” with feel-good and feel-smart technology and little real substantive work or thought which is why sociologist call it the “presentation” culture …pretty and slick to look at but ….well you’ll find out when a crunch or unknown comes. No doubt that the new tools have helped many who had the requisite cognitive skills, talent, knowledge and experience to use them but most of the rest as the sorceror’s apprentice in Disney’s Fantasia with about the same level of understanding and insight. If the technology argument is correct then those who earned their PHD’s in the last 10 years should be running circles around me and my Dean should be pleading with me to take early retirement: neither is happening and in fact just the opposite. But then I unfortunately had to go to school in the 60′s at an extremely competitive place where I had to bust my butt every day and work extremely hard to keep up and work a job and play a sport to keep my scholarship. Now I am really glad that I didn’t learn to be lazy and a screw off when I was an undergraduate and learned how to attend class every day and do my academic work every night and that certain truths just don’t change; it’s not the tools that make the mind, it is the mind that makes the tools and products with the tools with a lot of hard work, sweat, ingenuity, and perservance and that old fashion word I heard throughout the late 50′s and early 60′s: HUSTLE. I do not write assembler code today, but I most certainly understand how machines work and function at that level and such things are not FM to me as they are to most of my students.
generally_academic - May 1, 2010 at 2:04 pm
When a (hypothetical) student with two Fs and a C comes in before class and pleads he needs a good grade to transfer to Giant Mega Research University, then sits through class texting and listening to an ipod, I think I know what the problem is….
amnirov - May 2, 2010 at 5:34 am
How is anything from 1961 relevant? Let’s not forget what that generation of college students did to the environment, the economy, and word peace. If studying was their secret of success, we ought to burn down every single college library.
risingsenior - May 2, 2010 at 9:45 am
I agree that the abundance of procrastination vehicles, the ease of online research, and grade inflation all contribute here. As a student, I must also throw in my opinion that the rigidity of traditional education, the monotony of listening to a professor who thinks he knows the answer to everything and perhaps doesn’t really want to be there, and the frustration of having to fit all of our passions and dreams into the neat little degree sheets and mountains of other forms that make our administrators’ lives easier are all quite off-putting and disheartening. I think hard work and inspiration are certainly lacking in the classroom, but not just because of the students. Yes, perhaps we should expect more of students, but you should know that we are also expecting more from our professors.
concordancia - May 2, 2010 at 11:42 pm
While students in 1961 may have spent more time researching and typing their papers, my students spend more time looking up things that they really should know. Why memorize when you can always look it up? And it astounds me the number of times that they can look up the same thing without actually learning it.
ksledge - May 3, 2010 at 8:49 am
“As a student, I must also throw in my opinion that the rigidity of traditional education, the monotony of listening to a professor who thinks he knows the answer to everything and perhaps doesn’t really want to be there, and the frustration of having to fit all of our passions and dreams into the neat little degree sheets and mountains of other forms that make our administrators’ lives easier are all quite off-putting and disheartening.”Risingsenior — I think what you wrote here is important and professors should take note. However, I hope you also understand that this is the type of statement that makes professors say that students today are entitled. Someone older can correct me if I’m wrong, but students in 1961 didn’t complain about with these same procedures and methods of instruction. Courses today have a lot more entertainment and real world application to them, and less simple lecturing than they did decades ago. But you’re also still right–professors today should adapt to the current needs of their students. Both groups need to compromise.
lsimpson33 - May 3, 2010 at 9:21 am
How about the changing information environment? No longer do students need to spend hours memorizing forumlas, definitions of words, etc. All of that is readily available using google on their computer or smartphone. The new education should be focusing on how they can effectively USE this information to problem-solve and gain higher levels of knowledge as well as how to discern which information is accurate and which isn’t. As we as educators begin to see this, we should be moving past models where students spend countless hours memorizing. Instead, we should be working on ways to fill these hours with projects and problem-solving exercises to help them apply the knowledge that is so readily avaiiable to them.
sabbatical - May 3, 2010 at 10:15 am
Too much work = unhappy students. Unhappy students = low course evaluations. What’s hard to understand about that?
archdiva - May 3, 2010 at 10:24 am
I’m surprised to see little or no mention of co-curricular activities. Students today are engaged outside the classroom in leadership positions, organizations and other activities which still stimulate their learning but don’t fall under a traditional curriculum. They spent their youth being over-involved in activities to prepare them for college and now they’re over-involved once on campus. Learning doesn’t occur only in the classroom, folks!
11313934 - May 3, 2010 at 10:53 am
Number 11 Betty Johnson explains well the differences in time spent finding information and writing papers. My view is that students today have many more demands on their time outside of college, and the main demand is working at a job, often not on campus. In his book Making the Most of College issued ten years or so ago Richard J. Light studies what factors result in success at college. He studied Harvard students (I think). One thing I rememeber is that Harvard students self reported spending about 24 hours a week studying. At my own college at the time our research indicated about 8 hours a week of studying. One big difference that was obvious to me then was that many more of our students worked long hours at jobs than was the likely case at Harvard. PJTramdack
n2n_0131 - May 3, 2010 at 11:38 am
Does this research indicate any gender differences? Are male students doing less work than female students? National trends indicate that female high school students do more homework and take tougher classes than their male counterparts, and it would be interesting to see if this translates to the college level.I also agree that time spent does not necessarily equal quality. The computer may make writing a paper faster, but then there are all those cool formatting toys, and maybe some pictures to be added, and…
tombartlett - May 3, 2010 at 12:02 pm
@n2n_0131 From the paper:”Study time fell for students from all demographic subgroups, within race, gender, ability, and family background, overall and within major, for students who worked in college and for those who did not, and the declines occurred at 4-year colleges of every type, size, degree structure, and level of selectivity.” The chart with the gender breakdowns shows a very slight difference. In 2003, women studied an average of 14.82 hours per week and males an average of 13.64. It was up around 25 hours a week for both men and women in 1961.
tgroleau - May 3, 2010 at 1:26 pm
I’d like to see data comparing 1961 to today on the cost of higher education relative to median middle-class incomes and the number of hours students worked at jobs to pay for their education. Absent that data, I suspect that college was relatively cheaper in 61′ and fewer students had jobs.That said, I don’t doubt that today’s typical student is inherently less interested in academics than those of yesteryear (I wasn’t even born in 1961). In those allegedly “good old days” only a small, select portion of the population attempted college. Today we promote college for everyone. If a larger proportion of high school students go to college, then we can expect the “average” quality of college students do decrease.Whether that’s good or bad is a completely different question.
ms446 - May 3, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Keep in mind that fewer people went to college back in the 1960s. Census data show that the proportion of people with 4-year college degrees has substantially increased since the 60s. It’s a reasonable possibility that, because there are simply more students going to college now, we’ve got more students who are less willing/prepared to be there, and who therefore study less.
ventromil - May 3, 2010 at 3:39 pm
College students are just a product of their environment. Why in the world would a student spend that much time studying if they don’t need to? I think the question this article should have addressed as a result of the data is — Why don’t professors teach anymore? Faculty will never cease to take the opportunity to play the victims of educational outcomes…