A full-time college student will take a minimum of 12 units a semester. Back in the olden days, when college students were expected to work to earn a grade, it was considered reasonable to expect 2 hours of work outside of class for every hour in class. Accordingly, a student taking 12 hours of classes a week should expect to work 24 hours for a total of 36 hours—less than a full-time job, and they still have weekends off.
I’m tired of my tax money supporting these whiners:
While 87 percent of students said that college is “too difficult,” the same percentage are studying less than 10 hours per week, a new survey found.
Intelligent.com, which regularly surveys college students, gathered data from 1,000 respondents, all of whom attend four-year colleges.
“The vast majority of students (87%) say they have felt at least one of their college classes was too challenging and should have been made easier by the professor,” the survey found.
Buck up, get to work, and learn something. College isn’t supposed to be the equivalent of 4 years at a resort.
Update, 12/10/22: But what, there's more!
As long as college students are considered entitled customers, their complaints about their professors will be taken seriously by administrators...
There was a time when college administrators paid little attention to student dissatisfaction. Their opinions were largely written off as a sign of their immaturity. But things have changed because of the high stakes involved. Students believe that they are entitled to all A’s while putting in little effort because they are paying soaring tuition. Not surprisingly, professors who have not yet achieved tenure are reluctant to disappoint students out of fear that poor ratings will be used against them. In contrast, tenured professors simply dig in their heels, citing lowering standards...
The long-term effects of corporatization are disheartening. Colleges and universities are supposed to be centers of research and learning. The farther they move away from their primary mission by trying to please students, the more they undermine it. The transformation is part of a larger cultural shift that views higher education as a private good benefiting individual students rather than a public good helping the nation prosper by turning out educated citizens.
First, students are not customers, they're product. A school, like a corporation, that puts out poor product will eventually find itself in a bad place. And second, a "public good" should benefit everyone; if public education is seen as a private good, which it is becoming more and more, then the public should not support it financially.
4 comments:
I agree with your sentiment, and I think your numbers are even a little low. In order to graduate in 8 semesters with 120 credit hours, a full-time student needs to take 15 hours (units) a semester. Also, I seem to recall in the 1980s that they said you should expect to put in 3 hours, not 2, outside of class for every hour in class.
We also had roommates, ate ramen noodles, and had gym class in ancient airless humid buildings, not fancy rec centers.
I went to college in Texas, though, so there was no snow to walk both ways in.
When I was in college, a full-time student had to take 15 credits; not 12. There were also freshman weeder courses (math, science and English comp); specifically designed to remove those kids who couldn’t or wouldn’t do the required work. Out-of-class work was demanding. I remember my freshman French class (not honors) which required us to read a 20th-century French play almost every week. Many of the books were published in France and readers had to cut pages that had been folded for printing. Lectures were the standard format for big classes (no recording allowed) and those who couldn’t take good notes - profs gave a course syllabus only; no notes - didn’t survive. Two thirds of entering freshman made it to graduation, but demanding majors graduated about a third of their entering freshmen. Tutoring resources were volunteer-run and were only for intro classes. That was the 60s and dinosaur were still roaming
Where I went to school, we had snow :-)
As I understand it, 12 units is the minimum required to keep "full time student" standing at most colleges. Yes, a student will have to take more than that in order to graduate on time, but if they *needed* to take only 12 some semester, they could without jeopardizing their enrollment status.
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