Over the past half-century, the amount of time college student studies dropped from 24 to 15 hours per week.

The article made the following interesting points:

1) The study may have some problems with it, and it is only one study.

2) Many students have more things in their lives (e.g. work) than students of the past, and can't necessarily devote their whole lives to school.

3) Computers may have cut down study time significantly by making research and writing much easier.

Heavy facebook use causes narcissism? Narcissism makes you study less?

Undergrad was easy for me because either

1. The class was a general requirement that professors knew people didn't care about so they made them easy

2. The class was so small that a few lazy people set the bar very low and the professor had low expectations

or

3. The potentially hard courses had people with a variety of backgrounds and the professors taught so that everyone would understand

I went to a big public university that had very moderate admissions standards, but I was in a program that was very selective. When I took classes outside my program, I was shocked at how easy the classes were and how easy it was to ditch class and cram for finals. I got a B in psychology just by going to class. No studying or reading.

College degrees today are just pedigrees to employers telling them that you will sit, stay and do your work like a good boy if they hire you.

Colleges are too big, do not push students because they do not want to lose tuition dollars for drop outs, and dumb everything down to keep graduation rates high. Given the expense, people are getting ripped off every day.

It probably has a lot more to do with college being opened to everyone. 50 years ago, most/all schools were reserved for the top students (only 1 in 10 Americans finished college). Now, almost 1 in 3 Americans gets a college degree. You can't triple the enrollment at colleges without lowering standards.

This shouldn't be a surprise... College used to be for the highly motivated who needed to go to college for their desired field of work. Now EVERYONE goes to college.

Idontevenknow wrote:

College used to be for the highly motivated who needed to go to college for their desired field of work. Now EVERYONE goes to college.

This.

Concerned Citizen wrote:

3) Computers may have cut down study time significantly by making research and writing much easier.

This alone could account for much of the difference. A lot of kids today have no experience of the joys of writing a paper without using a computer. The hours spent looking through card catalogs, figuring out the "right" keywords to look up for your topic, hunting in the library to find a book or magazine, finding it at long last only to discover that the article/book has a terribly misleading title and has nothing to do with the paper you're writing. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Then of course you'd get to write the paper, then fight with a typewriter for a few hours to type the damn thing up, since no typewriter ever did exactly what you wanted it to do 100% of the time.

And raise your hand if you've ever literally cut and pasted (using scissors and glue) an illustrative picture into your paper.

Ok, that's enough. I need to go yell at some kids to get off my lawn.

I remember when I found the ctrl+alt+f function for a footnote. It changed my life.

I have two younger friends who just got bachelors degrees, and they took jobs as office receptionists making eight dollars an hour. That's what a modern college degree is worth. If you aren't going to school for a specific program that you will turn into a career, you will be working as a busser for life. Your BA in underwater basket weaving doesn't mean anything to anyone.

Since the 1960s at the very least, college has become nothing more than delayed adolescence. For the five years you are there, you can act like you are doing something with your life, but you know, deep down, that you just payed 50,000 dollars to get a high school education, and you're graduating with people who spent more time in the rec center gym than they did in classes.

High school education used to churn out adults, prepared for the world; now they hope college will do that, so they pass everyone along with a substandard education, and zero development of skills.

Hopkinton wrote:

Idontevenknow wrote:

College used to be for the highly motivated who needed to go to college for their desired field of work. Now EVERYONE goes to college.

This.

College used to be for wealthy men as part of their upper-class pedigree. Haven't you guys ever heard of the "gentleman's C?"

Also, I recently read a biography of William James. A chapter described his days as a student at Harvard Medical School in the mid-late 19th Century. Most of his exams were oral; they weren't in writing because a significant proportion of the student body was illiterate.

I sold myself short academically and took an athletic scholarship to a big state school. I never missed a class, but I studied ZERO hours per week; I only cracked a book the night or two before finals and crammed for a few hours. Even during the cram sessions, I never stayed up past midnight.

Then again, I scored a near-perfect SAT with zero studying, so the combination of my high-level natural ability and "slumming" school choice made for an easy ride.

My peers were extremely unimpressive. I've always regretted I didn't go to a school where I would be surrounded by intellectual candlepower equal or superior to my own. What a fool I was (and still am).

Idontevenknow wrote:

This shouldn't be a surprise... College used to be for the highly motivated who needed to go to college for their desired field of work. Now EVERYONE goes to college.

No, college used to be a privilege exclusively for rich people who could afford both the cost of attending university and the necessary private preparatory school education. The thought of having a job or family while in school was absurd before WWII.

It depends on what kind of degree you get and from where. Obviously if you get a degree in philosophy from [insert no-name university/tech school here] no one is going to give a shit what you did for 4 years.

You never hear the Engineering, Business, Medical, or Science majors whining about how worthless their degree was.

plurbius unomno wrote:

I sold myself short academically and took an athletic scholarship to a big state school. I never missed a class, but I studied ZERO hours per week; I only cracked a book the night or two before finals and crammed for a few hours. Even during the cram sessions, I never stayed up past midnight.

Then again, I scored a near-perfect SAT with zero studying, so the combination of my high-level natural ability and "slumming" school choice made for an easy ride.

My peers were extremely unimpressive. I've always regretted I didn't go to a school where I would be surrounded by intellectual candlepower equal or superior to my own. What a fool I was (and still am).

Dude no one gives a shit about what you woulda coulda shoulda been.

I am not sure if you are being sarcastic by your last paragraph but you sound like the captain of the USS Smugboat.

Idontevenknow wrote:

This shouldn't be a surprise... College used to be for the highly motivated who needed to go to college for their desired field of work. Now EVERYONE goes to college.

Judge Smails said it best.

Fee Fee wrote:

It depends on what kind of degree you get and from where. Obviously if you get a degree in philosophy from [insert no-name university/tech school here] no one is going to give a shit what you did for 4 years.

You never hear the Engineering, Business, Medical, or Science majors whining about how worthless their degree was.

That's because they're such sh*tty writers that they can't get a magazine piece about their woes published.

Concerned Citizen wrote:

That's because they're such sh*tty writers that they can't get a magazine piece about their woes published.

It doesn't take a four year degree to be a good writer.

"Then again, I scored a near-perfect SAT with zero studying"

Don't you people ever get tired of stroking yourselves?