Many a parent have said that modern college students have no idea what a work ethic is: We don’t work hard enough and we won’t know what hardship is until we walk fifteen miles uphill through snow to get to school like they did.
Two University of California professors have recently attempted to prove such claims — or at least the sentiment behind them — are true.
Two months ago, Mindy Marks, assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Riverside, and Philip Babcock, assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, published a study comparing study hours reported by college students from 1961 to 2003. They analyzed four surveys completed at different points during the 42−year time period.
What they found was a significant decline in the amount of time students devoted to studying. On average, students in 1961 studied 24 hours a week, while students in 2003 studied only 14 hours a week.
In an attempt to explain the decrease, Marks and Babcock took into account whether surveyed students had part−time jobs, what majors they were completing and what kinds of schools they were attending. What they found was that none of these factors had any influence on whether studying hours declined; studying hours fell across the board — for students of all majors, at all types of colleges, of all genders and both with and without part−time jobs.
Read the full story at the Tufts Daily.
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