http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-11-10-nsse_students_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip Chris Smith, in 2007 a sophomore at Ohio Dominican University, looks at his blog in his dorm room in Columbus, Ohio. Smith has been unafraid to hide his preference for playing baseball over going to class or criticizing professors for assigning too much homework. Many students who come to class unprepared still end up with A's, a new survey shows. By Kiichiro Sato, AP College students 'get away with' poor preparation By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY Nearly one in five college seniors and 25% of freshmen say they frequently come to class without completing readings or assignments, a national survey shows. And many of those students say they mostly still get A's. The survey doesn't address whether those students are lazy, busy, intimidated, bored or geniuses. But it supports other studies that suggest a gap between what college professors expect from students and what students actually do. NSSE: Assessing undergraduate experience FACULTY: Mentors and models WRITING: It's the path to better learning AT AUGUSTANA COLLEGE: Faculty members rethink their roles "College learning is a two-way street," says Indiana University associate professor Alexander McCormick, director of the National Survey of Student Engagement, which conducted the study. "The purpose here is not to dump on faculty, but when a substantial chunk of students come to class unprepared, it suggests that they can get away with it." The findings, out today, are based on surveys this spring of nearly 380,000 randomly selected freshmen and seniors at 722 four-year colleges. Participating schools generally reflect the diversity of U.S. higher education. FIND MORE STORIES IN: Indiana University | Northern Arizona University | National Survey of Student Engagement Colleges use the survey to help evaluate the quality of their undergraduate education. Among findings: - Students report spending about 3 1/2 hours a week preparing for each class. That's about half what instructors expect from a typical student. - 59% of seniors and 55% of freshmen said they frequently worked harder than they thought they could to meet an instructor's standards. - Of those who frequently didn't do homework, 29% of freshmen and 36% of seniors got mostly A's. Those findings echo observations of Northern Arizona University anthropology professor Cathy Small, who spent a year living in a dorm and attending classes alongside freshmen as part of research for a 2005 book. Many students cut corners as a way of managing the demands of student life, when "there were no consequences and no rewards for doing or not doing" homework, she says. Small has since cut back on required reading and ties homework directly to discussions, quizzes or exams. "Part of accountability meant you created readings that were realistic in terms of the goals of the class." READERS: Do you think professors assign more or less work than they used to? Why might today's college students be skipping assignments? Do or did you? ----------------------- Comments: (26) mfrancis107 wrote: 1h 1m ago The articles states "The survey doesn't address whether those students are lazy, busy, intimidated, bored or geniuses." So why are people assuming the students in the 25% are lazy? Ray LM wrote: 1h 2m ago Why prepare for anything if you can achieve yor goal anyway. We just voted for a president who's vice president said "Obama is not prepared and not qualified to be president"!! zlandar wrote: 1h 3m ago If you take "shortcuts" to get through college you are only cheating yourself. You are literally paying the school tens of thousands of dollars each year. If you want to pay a school $30-40k a year to play baseball like the fool in the article I'll give you a discount and you can pay me to play baseball in my backyard. If this is the attitude of the typical college crowd then the next financial disaster is going to come when these lazy buffoons get out into the real world with their worthless pieces of paper and can't find a job to pay back their $100k college debt. I sure as heck wouldn't lend a dime to college students with that kind of attitude. As an employer would you want to hire someone like this? As to the college poster who said they can't do all the assigned work that is a bunch of #%#. You choose not to commit the time to do the work. It may crimp your social life to actually have to do all the assignments but hey, it's your money that your spending to chit chat with friends. Just remember that student loans follow you even through bankruptcy. PiercedPsycho wrote: 1h 22m ago When I was in college full-time, I did my homework. I also managed to work full-time AND have a life. I'm now working, I have a four-month old daughter, and I'm planning on going back to school within the year. I just turned 21. I think if I could work full time, go to school full time, do all my homework, and have a life two years ago, I'm sure anyone else could. Terr wrote: 1h 28m ago These A's are given, not earned. I work with incoming Freshmen ,and they are still in the "if I show up, I'll pass, right?" mode. College should not the the 13th grade. We have no end of course test that you can fake your way through. I highly recommend that students go to work for a year before coming into "grown-up school." American colleges and universities should investigate the concept of a Learning College! bruceton wrote: 1h 50m ago I love these "stressed out in college" articles. Wait till you graduate, and if you even can land a job this is what you'll have to look forward to for the next 30 years: 60 hour work weeks, 2 weeks vacation...maybe, insane bosses, oh and get used to not having any money and changing jobs every 3-5 years. Keep in mind, this is if you are lucky! Wah, Wah. Recommend 2 | Report Abuse Discgolfboy wrote: 2h 31m ago As freshman in college I can attest to the truth of this article. For me often the "motivation" behind taking shortcuts (i.e. skimming v. reading) is the sheer amount of work that I am asked to do. I will often be assigned to read 20-30 pages in several different textbooks, in addition to working the problems. I just don't have the time to completely read every assignment. If I can do the work without reading everything, then I do. Like this article says, my grades have not really suffered from this practice. Recommend 4 | Report Abuse Texass wrote: 2h 59m ago If you teach, this is no surprise. College student are poorly prepared when the enter college and continue with a lack of caring, studying, questioning and effort Recommend 2 | Report Abuse yocaseyatbat wrote: 3h 12m ago What the hell ?? I have been saying all along that our institutions of higher learning have been dumbing down to facilitate poor preforming students. I had my education paid for like most students. I HAD an obligation to preform well or my funds were cut off. Period. What has happened here is NO MORE ACCOUNTABILITY. You don't need another study to figure this out. Look at all the students that have graduated in the last 20 years. The grades look good on paper but in the real world the preform poorly. This problem started when little Johnny was in grade school. Passed on to stay up with the classmates. Might hurt their self esteem. HOGWASH. I don't care what tag or spin you put on it, if a student is not meeting standards HOLD THEM BACK. It has been proven this works. Passing a poor preforming student on is passing the buck to next teacher and hamstrings the educational process. When little Johnny graduates from highschool and can't read at a fith grade level, you WILL have problems. YOU don't need a study to verify this. Recommend 2 | Report Abuse zlandar wrote: 3h 33m ago It makes good sense to go to a local state college to save money. Better question is why someone would overpay to go to a private college that academically is no better or even worse than the local state college. Getting into a top 20 school is no guarantee for success, however if you excel then it increases your chances of getting into a selective graduate program. It really depends on your career goals. It really depends on the class. You can probably get away with that in intro to biology, but not in Organic chem, biochemistry, mammalian physiology, Virology, and inorganic chemistry that I took in undergrad. This study really needs to take into account whether it was an upper or lower division class or what kind of major it was. All those people who went to a high faluting "top 20" need to get over themselves. Paying three or four times the money doesn't makes sense. The education is always what you make of it, not necessarily the school. zlandar wrote: 4h 16m ago I find the photo at the top of this article incredibly irritating. Does anyone think the Cool Breeze pictured there is going to be a top job prospect in this economy? The poor schmuck has probably shot himself in the foot as his face is permanently plastered next to a caption: "Smith has been unafraid to hide his preference for playing baseball over going to class or criticizing professors for assigning too much homework." Good luck finding a job with that plastered on your resume. Real stroke of brilliance paying $31k/year to play B-ball. The mean ACT of students going to this place is 23 and the average high school GPA is 3.1. That is a complete and utter JOKE. Any high school student aiming for a top 25 college are laughing to themselves. zlandar wrote: 4h 28m ago If people think 3 1/2 hours/week cuts it for college level work they are kidding themselves. Having graduated from a top 20 college I can say my peers were doing 3 1/2 hours every 1-2 days, not a week. Yes there are some people who didn't care but they were not walking out of the doors with As. I saw plenty of Bs and Cs, with some Ds and Fs for the truly slack. If there are colleges that are handing out As for such little work it shows up in the mean GPA of their graduating class and in the class rank of a student. If a student has a 3.9 GPA but only has a class rank of 300/1000 students it's easy to deduce that the school they are graduating from tends to grade inflate and makes the quality of work the students have done suspect. Selective graduate schools are not stupid. Even if you manage to slip through into a good graduate school, you will be ill-prepared for the level of course work. The Mick wrote: 4h 45m ago I agree with FilmProf that course evaluations of professors contribute to dumbing down of education. And the colleges have become so concerned about filling their campuses with bodies they've become country clubs. I still notice that the physical science majors (chemistry, physics, etc.) of today have as rigorous a set of requirements as when I attended college in the '60s & 70's. Perhaps the fact that they have to work their butts off to master calculus, etc. means they can't hide whether or not they've properly learned the material. Jack Hu wrote: 5h 26m ago If you are republican, the issue is personal responsibility in education and how the society should reward in big to motivate good behavior. If you are Democrats, it is about social economical injustice and we should all race to the bottom to achieve equality. truckman wrote: 5h 29m ago And they wonder why they dont get promoted or a raise in the real world too. mooshiefamily wrote: 5h 56m ago This maybe what's known as matriculating a problem rather than solving it. Primary and secondary education has been in a death spiral for decades so this situation is unexpected only by those not paying any attention. Now we'll have to "dumb-down" a bachalor's degree to the point that "college educated" may only fit those with a master's degree. One might wonder if the federal government's involvement in education has been healthy. Happy2-B wrote: 6h 30m ago I should add that the 18 hours is both in undergraduate and graduate hours... Happy2-B wrote: 6h 30m ago I got my undergraduate in 1981 and am taking 18 semester hours while working part time. I don't think the expectations have changed, but I have noticed one thing. There is a lot of cheating, open cheating that bothers me. I see people straining to look at other's papers and even hand motioning sign language to each other for multiple choice answers. Even adults...what the heck? In regard to the reading ahead of time...25% isn't that outrageous. Some people can infer more from lecture, class discussion, ect... It isn't like we all come in to the classroom equipped the same. Some are more able to get by without reading than others. Clearly they have learned that they can. Filmprof wrote: 6h 30m ago Why? This should be obvious to anyone who has been a professor over the last thirty years. When the trend to evaluate teachers based strongly upon student evaluations began in the seventies, the dumbing down of the curriculum began. It is now an epidemic. The decision was made by higher education administrators to treat students as clients and customers, not as learners who have to prove themselves at school. "Student Satisfaction Rankings" became the norm for evaluation. So if a professor wanted to keep a job, get promoted, have a salary increase etc. he/she had to make students happy. And guess what? The number of books assigned became fewer and academic rigor still suffers because of this backward approach to evaluation. No one has taught students how to evaluate a professor's performance. No one has taught students how to evaluate.a subject they know little or nothing about. And yet, these "evaluations", which do not stand the tests of scientific rigor, rule the campuses and the lives of the teachers. On the other hand, it makes the job of administrators easier when numbers, even the bogus numbers of happiness ratings, are used instead of rigorous administrative and peer evaluations. because wrote: 6h 42m ago Your liberal professors in action... Students who don't want to learn should be replaced by students who Want to learn... Or is arrirmative action the problem?? egypt1980 wrote: 7h 39m ago Calling all lazy students! You can graduate with A's even though you party hard! warlock5712 wrote: 8h 33m ago I was a fulltime non-traditional student who graduated last may, and It was very common for my younger classmates not to be prepared for class. In a couple of my classes I was the only one able to participate in class discussions. I don't know what their reasons were for not doing assignments, but worked fulltime plus overtime during football and basketball season and still maintained a 3.65 gpa. I guess their lives are a lot more busier than mine. BishopKingPawn wrote: 9h 8m ago The Melting Way wrote "In the U.S., grades are very important, so students focus on techniques to get A's. " Of course the best way to get A's is... to outperform your classmates. ambrose1 wrote: 10h 10m ago To many idiots graduate. In America, college is a business first and foremost. The Melting Way wrote: 12h 33m ago It's no secret in Europe that college in America is very easy compared to here. In the U.S., grades are very important, so students focus on techniques to get A's. This doesn't equate to a good education however. In Europe, students focus on learning the material. They remember much of what they learn, and get an overall better education. Reason: No one in Europe asks about your grades or your class standings. They don't have to. They simply ask if you graduated. It is enough.