An F in Student Effort

Philip Babcock

Philip Babcock is an assistant professor of economics at University of California, Santa Barbara. He and Mindy Marks, an economist at the University of California, Riverside, recently issued a report on the decline in studying time among college students.

Updated March 31, 2011, 9:09 PM


If colleges no longer require the hard work needed to develop real skills, how can students hope to acquire them?

It is visible for students who work for pay while in college, as well as for those who don’t. Of course, new technologies could have made students more effective at studying than they used to be. But most of the decline in study times predates these technologies. Given that there is no evidence of rising preparedness of college students, the conclusion is hard to avoid: things have been made much easier.

Most of us in higher education believe that the skills that are truly worth acquiring involve hard work. Put simply, thinking requires effort.

If colleges no longer require this kind of effort, how could students hope to acquire these skills and how could colleges hope to instill them?

Topics: Education, colleges, students

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