„What happened to studying?“ fragt Keith O’Brien im Boston Globe vom 4. Juli und stellt fest: „It is a fundamental part of college education: the idea that young people don’t just learn from lectures, but on their own, holed up in the library with books and, perhaps, a trusty yellow highlighter. But new research, conducted by two California economics professors, shows that over the past five decades, the number of hours that the average college student studies each week has been steadily dropping“. Tom Bartlett sucht im Chronicle of Higher Education Erklärungen für dieses Phänomen: „So maybe college students today are lazy. Or classes are a lot easier now. Or students in 1961 were big nerds with nothing better to do than waste their weekends at the library. Other explanations welcome“. [Vom Auftreten der Begriffe „waste“ und „library“ in einem Satz distanziert sich die Verfasserin dieses Eintrags ;-)]
Lesesaal, Bibliothek der University of British Columbia, (cc) UBC Library Graphics
Die Studie „The Falling Time Cost of College: Evidence from Half a Century of Time Use Data“ von Philip Babcock und Mindy Marks kann als Preprint im pdf-Format nachgelesen werden.