
What happened to studying? - ilamont
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/04/what_happened_to_studying/
======
todayiamme
The ugly truth is that kids don't study because they aren't expected to.

Let's face it as long as their kid gets that perfect GPA and is obedient
enough most parents don't give a damn that they actually learn something. To
my peers it's just a ritual they need to complete in order to have a good
"life" whatever that is.

In fact, my teachers have scolded me for trying to derive stuff on my own. It
is quite obvious to them that I should be spending time practicing to get
marks instead. Who cares if I actually know that electric flux is only the
field lines that _penetrate_ the surface? As my teacher put it they'll check
my mark sheet instead.

So, is it any shock that students don't study?

I know that I am learning the secrets of the universe in some ways, and what
within my textbooks lie answers to questions that people have pondered over
for centuries, but the truth is that no one else gives a damn. They know what
a muon is because they need to know what a muon is. They can't see nature and
they really don't care.

No one expects them to create things, that's left to _those_ nuts like me
(someone said this to me point-blank). What is expected of them is status,
prestige and a good paycheck with a stamp that they won the rat race of life.
Nothing more. Nothing less. Oh and a big house in the suburbs to show that
they have arrived won't be too bad either.

In the end, this is a problem that is core to us as a society. Most kids are a
mirror of how they were brought up, and only if they are taught to see things
differently can the status quo change, but as anyone may tell you it takes
integrity and it is just too damn hard. (no one makes the case better than Al
Pacino in scent of a woman <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqsf0XynGz8>)

~~~
Daniel_Newby
"No one expects them to create things, that's left to those nuts like me
(someone said this to me point-blank)."

I distinguish the two types of students by whether or not they need calculus
to proceed. The ones who don't are just serving time.

~~~
abalashov
As a person of humanities background, I find that criterion questionable. :-)

~~~
Daniel_Newby
How about we say the ones not studying calculus are 85% likely to be just
serving time. ;-)

How _would_ you determine which university students are just there to get a
degree, any degree?

------
seancron
This part made me cringe:

"Marks herself points out that employers don’t generally care about the
content of job applicants’ classes; they’re more interested in whether an
applicant graduated, was able to meet deadlines, and work within a
bureaucracy"

~~~
Natsu
Sad, but probably true. One of the classes I remember the most was one that
was set up to give engineering students an introduction to the workplace. So,
you had business-like tasks (most of which were centered around Excel) and you
were graded by whether you met, exceeded, or didn't meet expectations.

In one assignment, I made a really fancy Excel spreadsheet (it was a
producer/consumer type problem, and my 1s for produced units actually moved
across the page). But it had a bug, and the numbers it created were pure
gibberish. I found the bug but had no time to fix it. I documented this fact
somewhere in the fine print and talked about how I would fix it if I had more
time.

It _looked_ cool though, even if it didn't work at all, so I got "exceeds
expectations." I had known how demos work long before that, of course, but I
think it was my first real demo.

As for studying, well, maybe they should ask what happens to it after college?
I didn't think we were supposed to stop. Which reminds me, I should fire up
Anki and review.

~~~
seancron
I agree that college should not be the end of learning. However, I wouldn't
want to be taught by a professor that says "that employers don’t generally
care about the content of job applicants’ classes; they’re more interested in
whether an applicant graduated, was able to meet deadlines, and work within a
bureaucracy."

If they truly believe that, it will reflect in their courses. Instead of
trying to teach their subject to the best of their ability, they'll might
instead give many deadline oriented assignments that do not help learning of
any kind. Instead of being accessible for students to ask questions, they
might make it a more difficult process to get in touch with them,
rationalizing that "they don't really care about the subject, all they care
about is getting a good grade, and graduating so they can get a job in some
bureaucratic workplace."

Professors with that attitude can turn students off to a subject that they
would have otherwise enjoyed, and make it more difficult to learn.

~~~
robryan
Yeah, in this situation they are forgetting that not everyone in the class is
doing it just to essentially check off a box in their degree process. Recently
there was an email sent out that was basically like "do data mining, it's big
in industry", giving that subject a miss because the lecturer is terrible but
also because he's so industry focused.

I'm not planning on continuing in academia but I'm certainly not wanting to
take classes that are just there to fulfil degree requirements without going
deep into the subject and providing interesting and challenging content.

------
prodigal_erik
They just barely touch on the important part, which is whether or not students
are achieving the same mastery of the subject matter. If professors are making
courses too easy, that's the thing to fix. Butt-in-seat hours are only a
symptom, and focusing on this (especially after acknowledging it's not the end
goal!) is oddly Puritan.

~~~
jodrellblank
Has the subject matter stayed the same over the past 3-5 decades that you can
usefully compare "the same mastery of the subject matter"?

~~~
cj
If your taking classes to learn latin or greek, it probably has not. That
might be an example of a good subject matter to use as a benchmark.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Single page:

[http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/04/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/04/what_happened_to_studying/?page=full)

------
reader5000
College is simply another hoop to jump through for (an increasingly unlikely)
shot at the middle class. The act of studying is useful for when you actually
want to know something, but the commoditized studying colleges encourage of
plowing hours into courses one cares very little about has very little
purpose, and students know this. Just another notch on the "American education
is an absurdity and a farce" stick.

~~~
cjy
I don't think you should throw out "increasingly unlikely" without some
evidence. I do worry about our education system. But the idea that it's harder
to attain a middle class standard of living then it was in the past is very
dubious. And, it's a claim that's used to support a lot of bad policies.

~~~
reader5000
For example: [http://www.mybudget360.com/does-a-college-degree-protect-
you...](http://www.mybudget360.com/does-a-college-degree-protect-your-career-
unemployment-rate-for-college-graduates-highest-on-record/)

------
seancron
What do they consider studying though? Is paper writing counted as studying?
Is online homework or problem sets counted as studying? Because I can tell you
from personal experience that often those things take up much of my time, and
tend to burn me out a bit so that when I have free time, I hang out with my
friends and work on personal projects that I enjoy rather than studying the
material I just did for homework. If I had more free time available, and less
work to do, I would most likely read my book more thoroughly, especially in
classes that I enjoy.

------
DannoHung
10 hour reduction in studying effort sounds about right given the incredible
leaps in personal IT.

Lots of time spent studying is just finding the right damn information.

~~~
Qz
If you read the article it points out that the drop in time spent studying
started before the major IT effects on colleges.

------
dkarl
College is losing its romantic lustre. Students used to believe in education
for itself, but now ambitious students just cram in more classes and
activities to graduate faster or pad their grad school applications. Before, a
student studying the American Revolution in class might go to the library and
flip through the books in the professor's "suggested reading" section on the
syllabus looking for a particularly interesting book to read thoroughly. And
while he was there he would see other books in the stacks and end up reading
for a couple of hours. Then he'd bring up what he learned in conversations
with other engaged students.

Students would feel _good_ about studying like that. They were _learning_. It
was making them better than they used to be. Not only that, going to college
was what they were _supposed_ to do to succeed, and studying and discussing
ideas was what you were _supposed_ to do in college, so reading books about
the American Revolution, or Sartre, and talking about them with your friends
was pretty closely linked with your future comfort, according to the rules of
society.

Less capable students would study for three hours because it was the only way
they could pass their classes. (The ones who were smart and ambitious but not
academically engaged? They're busy puking with rich men's sons. They pull down
the studying averages, but later they'll subsidize all that economically
unproductive studying as generous alumni.)

So what happened? Three things.

First, not many people have to study that hard to pass their classes.
Professors used to set challenges for students that would _force_ them to
study, like difficult papers and exams. Now, that is seen as authoritarian and
sadistic. You aren't allowed to test anybody just to make them study, because
many people find studying difficult, even unpleasant, so it must be
intrinsically bad for you. Studying has to be justified, on a minute, case-by-
case basis, by concrete future benefit. This is slightly better than the
attitude in some countries, especially in Asia, where forcing kids to study
hard is the point of the whole system, and subjects like history and chemistry
are just handy tools for what is essentially a benevolent society-wide hazing
ritual. However, it's a step back from understanding that studying, like
exercise, is actually good for you in certain quantities, and colleges are
providing a service in forcing you to do it.

I know that sounds weird to some people, so I'll explain it in a way that
hopefully everybody can relate to. Many people pay personal trainers to help
them work out. Exercise instruction is usually just a pretext. The real
purpose of the personal trainer is to provide social expectations, and
sometimes actual social pressure, to force the client to do something
beneficial they would not do in the absence of pressure: work hard in the gym.

Sometimes the pressure is merely having an hour-long appointment. Having made
the appointment, the client would feel guilty about skipping or arriving late.
The trainer also serves as an expert whose judgment about the nature and
intensity of the workout is more credible than the client's, so the client
would feel unjustified in substituting a lower standard. The trainer also
provides helpful emotional support by providing emotional energy and even the
threat (which must be real) of disapproval. Of course, this must be calibrated
to the client, but if the client knows there is no shame in giving up and
going home, then the personal trainer has failed in their job of providing
social pressure to help the client succeed.

This explains why colleges used to make kids work hard. Of course, now they
can't, because college is seen as compulsory for success, and success itself
is compulsory, and nothing compulsory can be unpleasant unless it's exactly
the same level of unpleasantness for everybody. It's basic fairness. So
professors who make students study hard are assumed to be emotionally damaged
reactionary sadists, unless they're charismatic enough to convince everyone
that they're actually doing it "for the keeeds."

Second, a lot of middle class students now have the sense of safety and
entitlement that used to be confined to the rich kids. So they're partying and
assuming that as long as they don't flunk out, their future is assured.

Third, ironically, college itself is no longer guarantees admission to an
economically stable middle class. Students who are worried about their future
need to do something that distinguishes them. Something documented, something
they can put on a grad school or job application. Grades mean nothing. Grade
inflation has made it pointless to work hard in your classes and learn the
subject better than anyone else, because you'll end up with nothing to show
for it. Spending time in the stacks reading about the American Revolution
doesn't make any sense to kids worried about their future; it's entitled self-
indulgence. To them, it's the same as drinking and puking every day, just
another form of entertainment that normal, economically insecure people can't
afford.

So what kind of kids would spend their time actually _studying?_ Ones with
old-fashioned, romantic ideas about college. Ones who aren't concerned about
their future. Ones who believe they should improve their minds and let
everything else take care of itself. Or ones who are lucky enough to inhabit a
social milieu where studying is actually encouraged. Kids in software and
engineering at least have open source and the "makers" social crowd to
encourage them to work hard. Writers can write for their friends, maybe even
try to get published. Kids in history and economics? They're stuck looking for
an undergraduate project with an impressive-sounding title.

~~~
reader5000
Nah, students never "cared" about learning. College started in the U.S. as a
way for the upper classes to cavort under the ostentation of "learning about
the world". It has always been a status signal. This is why the middle classes
are willing to pay their left nut for a suitably prestigious degree - status
signals to the middle classes are like honey to a bee (or something).

There are perhaps .5% of the population for whom college makes actual
productive sense - those intelligent and driven enough to devote their life to
producing original research. Colleges now fulfill sort of an odd intermesh in
society: stamping the middle classes with seals of 'approval', and housing
people who produce actual scholarship. There is really no logical connection
between the two, and indeed most professors dislike 'teaching'.

College isn't necessarily 'bad', but is when it saddles people who will be
earning 40-60k the rest of their lives with 200k loan debts.

~~~
cj
You're saying 199 in 200 people should not go to college? I disagree.

A lot of people are going to state and community colleges and are not spending
very much money to do so. There are _very few_ people who graduate with over
$100k in debt. Most have much less, if any.

~~~
reader5000
I am saying there is no productive value in them going relative to their
financial burden. For the many who go for free/cheap thanks to state subsidy,
that's great. But then we shouldn't worry that students aren't studying, since
college doesn't really DO anything in regards to future productivity and the
like.

Also, a lot of the "soft" factors people romanticize about college (spawning
appreciation for the arts or some niche intellectual pursuit, civic/social
development) have occurred for thousands of years by people just growing up.

------
j_baker
I've always figured that if I had to study for a test, there was something
wrong. A test should judge if you know the underlying concepts, not how many
facts you've memorized.

~~~
telemachos
Did you really never study a subject where at least part of what you needed to
learn was facts? History? A foreign language (noun and verb forms, vocabulary,
irregular noun and verb forms, genders, idioms)? Science? Computer science?
Math? Literature? All of these subjects involve learning facts - at least some
of the time.

Yes, ideas are important, but so are facts.

~~~
_delirium
Having enough command of background facts to quickly figure things out is
useful, but beyond that, knowing where to look up the facts seems like a
perfectly fine substitute for memorizing them. The real problem is if you know
so little that you don't even know how to figure out what you need.

~~~
pohl
_knowing where to look up the facts seems like a perfectly fine substitute for
memorizing them_

I suspect that you might revise this statement if you applied the simple
metacognitive strategy of thinking about this as if you were a software
system: if you put all of your facts on the other side of a high-latency
lookup system — as you are suggesting — you limit the size your brain's base
of associative firings. The work that one does to bring facts into the brain
instead of leaving them in external storage allows those concepts to be
quickly brought into the short-term "working memory" system where they can
take part in cognitive activities. Eschewing practice and memorization limits
the rate and scope of your thoughts. Worse yet, you won't know what you're
missing. (This is the basic reason that Paul Graham's Blub programmer doesn't
know what he's missing.)

------
adi92
1) People had fewer distractions earlier

2) Thanks to the Flynn effect, people are growing smarter, so need less time
for the same content

3) Thanks to the internet, its a lot easier and faster to learn something than
it was earlier (more cliffnotes type resources)

4)People today can probably make much better assessments to what things will
actually help them in their professional lives, and what things are random
rites of passage i.e. hoops they have to jump through to get their degree

------
hga
I wonder if this has been adjusted for the increase in dropout rates? I'm
assuming that many of those dropping out did less studying for whatever
reason, be it too busy working or just not having what it takes to do this
sort of unsupervised work.

------
tomjen3
I don't study nearly as much as I should if I was to follow the official
recommendations, but the truth is that it just doesn't take that long to learn
the basic ideas, and once you have those, it is pretty easy to build the
concepts on top of those.

It would take far more time if I was studying for a degree in the humanities,
simply because they don't have a solid foundation on which to build stuff.

------
SkyMarshal
Sounds like the Japanese system. Work your ass off in high school and
nighttime cram schools to get into the best colleges, then coast through
college, partying, drinking, recuperating from a hellish youth that sucked up
all your passion for learning, then graduate and get a job based on your top
college's pedigree.

------
known
I think education system should ideally create employers and not employees.

------
sliverstorm
So what are they doing instead?

~~~
sliverstorm
I think it is a valid question, and maybe it would answer why they are not
studying.

------
zackattack
if you want students to study then you should eliminate grades. grades simply
encourage them to game the system. of course, gaming the system is a very
valuable real world skill.

~~~
rick888
"if you want students to study then you should eliminate grades. grades simply
encourage them to game the system. of course, gaming the system is a very
valuable real world skill."

Grades many times give you the push you need to succeed. Without them, many
people wouldn't bother studying. A similar thing that happened recently in
many public schools is the elimination of winners and losers in sports games
(every game is a tie). Is this really going to prepare anybody for the real
world?

The only people "gaming the system" aren't interested in learning and probably
shouldn't be in college in the first place.

~~~
eru
> Without them, many people wouldn't bother studying.

With them, many people don't bother studying.

~~~
rick888
"With them, many people don't bother studying."

Why? Because they are afraid of failing?

~~~
eru
Who knows? But I guess you know (or have heard) of some people who do not
bother studying attending institutions that issue grades.

(I do not want to claim that grades cause non-studying. Just that even with
grades non-studying does occur--thus invalidating the grandfather-comment's
argument.)

~~~
rick888
"Who knows? But I guess you know (or have heard) of some people who do not
bother studying attending institutions that issue grades."

Some. But why cater to the minority? If the grade system wasn't working, we
would see more problems in schools and universities. I also don't really know
of a good alternative.

------
mkramlich
If I wanted to, I could probably learn more in a month or so of home schooling
using the Internet that what I could in an entire semester at a traditional
college. Roughly speaking, YMMV, etc. Could pick my own hours, topics, pace,
no need to cram for tests, no worry about grades, spend a ton less money, etc.

------
mkramlich
most of what they have most students "study" is academic trivia that (1) won't
be retained for very long after exams are done anyway, and (2) doesn't have
use after leaving college. Note I said 'most' and 'most'. The tech fields tend
to have more stickability and usefulness in what is taught (though it's not
perfect either). Most of the "studying" in college, from what I remember, was
about doing short-term memorization cramming in the days or weeks, and very
often just the night before or hours before a test of some kind.

Memorize, regurgitate/apply, purge and move on.

------
Ardit20
University is not about studying entirely. You can freely study in your own as
much as you like, simply buy the textbooks and read them. Indeed in such way
one can in perhaps five years learn about all the major subjects, economics,
physics, literature, et al.

The lectures are nothing more than a fanciful way of stating what is in the
reading and if you have done the reading before hand you would be really bored
and it is boring enough.

The seminars can be interesting and that is when everyone learns. You do need
to do the reading before hand, but that takes no more than one hour. That is
how long I used to study, one hour of reading before the class and I would be
very well prepared. Then I was able to engage in the class discussions and
engage in some real thinking.

That however does not include the assignments, especially in the final year,
or the exams, where, at some point around February or March, you need to study
almost all day and things can very easily get out of hand if you do not.

This is also where real knowledge is acquired. Not from the reading of the
class book, but from the preparation of assignments, which requires a reading
of some 20 journals, many cases - I did law and psychology - some books and
then the actual writing of the paper itself. It is a very successful model of
learning, that of learning by doing.

Now to go back to my point. University teaches you how to live independently
for a start, to have the confidence to stand in front of your peers or argue
with them, to manage and organise your time, but most important of all, to
actually learn who you are and who you want to be.

The real story from this article is not that students are studying less, the
reasons are obvious, we hardly need to take notes in class, we have power
point presentations which we can read at any time which we do not because they
are too condensed, everyone now has their own textbook which might not have
been true 50 years ago, which are only little used because we can actually
access real research which happens in pokets of the year rather than
throughout.

Thus the questions for the researches of the polls and the like mentioned in
the article are, when were the polls asked. From the article mentioning that
number one is that the students do not know how to study I would probably
think the polls were around October or November or maybe December time. This
is the quietest time in university life. Even if the polls were asked at the
same time each year since 1960s, there still have been many changes and things
are very different. Thus, perhaps students are not really studying less. They
might and probably do underestimate the time they spend studying also and
perhaps some might not consider certain activities as studying at all such as
researching for your assignment.

The real story from the article is that No 2 on the list is that the students
are depressed. Why? Perhaps because they are disappointed and bored. It is too
easy, you read the book, then you go to the lecture and are told what was in
the book, then you go to the seminar and again are told what is in the book.
Unless your memory is inferior, you will probably have a very good
understanding of what is in the book by the end of it, until come February
that is.

So why are the students depressed? Because they are disappointed and kind of
angry. They want to be creative, opinionated, original, discover some ground
breaking way of thinking, not rigid, objective, professional. They feel like
they are a bit regimented.

However, perhaps and probably by the end they realise that their expectations
were simply wrong and not very effective or useful when engaging with
practice. They instead probably appreciate that they now have very good idea
of the methods of operating within their field. If that is not success and if
the system which achieves the goal of teaching the kids how to be men, then,
what on earth is?

University works. Through the troubles and ordeals the adolescents are turned
into adults. They are given the time to discover what they like, what they
think, what are their principles, values, what are the principles and values
of society, do they agree with them, would they like to change them, they are
given the skills required to communicate effectively, find knowledge and
synthesise it with the aim of coming to a conclusion on the entire matter
etcetera.

I therefore disagree with the article that people are studying less. They are
just studying differently. I also disagree with many commentators who suggest
that our educational system is a shambles, especially at a university level. I
think it is the best system humankind has found to a smooth transition from a
confused adolescent to a very able adult.

