How Much Are College Students Working?

It’s a sore spot among academics like me: How much are students actually studying?

The good students are as strong as ever, and there are a lot of them. But many professors have noticed an enlarged “left tail” to the distribution of the bell curve. The average has shifted lower, pulled down by a disturbingly large cohort of less-than-engaged students.

We used to blame that on students holding down off-campus jobs. But it turns out that work is not the main distractor anymore.

So Much Socializing

Economists Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks first sounded the alarm in 2010, writing,

In 1961, the average full-time student at a four-year college in the United States studied about twenty-four hours per week, while his modern counterpart puts in only fourteen hours per week.

The historical expectation is that students will put in two hours of study for each hour of class time. Full-time students take 12- to 18-unit loads. Taking the average (15 units), and multiplying by two gives you 30 hours of expected study time per week. Babcock and Marks, and later sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, found that students were putting in less than half of that.

Last week, The Manhattan Institute published a disheartening study called “What Do College Students Do All Day? The Answer Isn’t Studying.” It reports data from the 2024 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE): First-year college students estimated spending only 6.3 hours/week doing assigned reading for their classes, and a total of 14.3 hours/week preparing for class.

What else are they doing? These same students report spending 5.3 hours/week in cocurricular activities (like intramural sports), 2.4 hours/week working on campus, 6.9 hours/week working off campus, and 11.9 hours/week relaxing and socializing.

Ah, so that’s what they’re doing!

What’s so troubling about this is that study time is a huge predictor of a student’s academic success.

Shifting Expectations

Since COVID, there has been a big change in students’ expectations — both of themselves and of their faculty. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports,

Professors have found that students are not where they left them back in the first part of 2020. Many seem unmotivated, disengaged. They struggle to come to class, to keep up with the work. But they expect professors to work with them, and they assume they’ll pass their classes anyhow.

That last part is the rub: They assume they’ll pass the class no matter how little work they put into it.

And they may be right. Colleges and universities, increasingly cash-strapped, have shifted toward viewing their students as customers. It hurts the bottom line if students leave — and they will leave, because they have to, if they fail their classes. Moreover, administrators are pressed to maintain (and grow) enrollment numbers.

All of this creates a race-to-the-bottom effect. Students don’t want to put in the time or effort it takes to do well academically, and faculty and administrators have little incentive to make them. Both sides play along to get along, curving Ds into Cs and letting the little darlings get away with less reading, less writing, and fewer demonstrations of hard skills.

Faculty report that “far fewer students show up to class,” and “those who do avoid speaking when possible.” Also, “many skip the readings or the homework,” and “have trouble remembering what they learned.” The students, meanwhile, say they “don’t see the point in doing much work outside of class” and that, “a 750-word essay feels long” to them.

In 2024, 74% of first-year students said they had not been given any writing assignments more than 11 pages long. Almost four in 10 (39%) said they were never asked to write a paper longer than five pages. What about seniors? Half of them (51%) said they had not completed a writing assignment of more than 11 pages during their last year.

There’s an old mantra in education: We need to “meet the students where they are.” That makes sense — to a point. Successful communication engages an audience at an accessible level. But we also need to give the students what they need, whether they have eyes to see it or not.

What to Do?

The Manhattan Institute scholars argue that colleges need a “culture reset,” starting with boards taking a more active role in setting expectations. Faculty, left to themselves, have a disincentive to raise the bar on academic rigor. Even if they want to — and many do, even though it’s more work for them — they run the risk of getting whacked by their students on course evaluations. That can really hurt them in their annual or tenure reviews.

Administrators also have a disincentive due to pressure to retain and grow enrollment. So, it’s really up to the board to provide the ”backstop,” empowering administrators and faculty to drive students towards higher levels of performance.

Another suggestion the Manhattan Institute makes is for colleges to embrace accountability. For example, those that accept federal funding are supposed to abide by the federal definition of a credit-hour, which “reasonably approximates to one hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours of out-of-class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks for one semester.” That means a student taking a three-credit class should put in at least nine hours per week of engagement with the material.

It’s true that students have been acclimated to low expectations. But it’s also true that education comes from the Latin word educare, which means “to lead forth.” Colleges should lead students forth into becoming the best versions of themselves. That means rigorous — and historically reasonable — academic standards implemented by faculty who work tirelessly at their craft and who care deeply about their students’ long-term success.

I’m happy to say, from my own experience, that many students want this kind of training — and when they experience it, they respond positively.

Alex Chediak (Ph.D., U.C. Berkeley) is a professor and the author of Thriving at College (Tyndale House, 2011), a roadmap for how students can best navigate the challenges of their college years. His latest book is Beating the College Debt Trap. Learn more about him at www.alexchediak.com or follow him on Twitter (@chediak).