How Much Study Time Is Enough?
By Cathy Boyd-Withers
As a Learning Skills Specialist at York, I frequently hear the question: “How much study time is enough?” Ask any professor, and the usual response is “2-3 hours per in-class hour every week”. Tell that to students and they nod – they’ve heard this before – but inside, most are thinking “that’s not humanly possible, so I won’t pay any attention to it”. Neither response is particularly helpful within the current context of post-secondary education.
Where did this unquestioned belief in 2-3 hours of study time per in-class hour come from? It appears to be linked to the “credit hour” or “Carnegie unit”, dating back over a century. (Shedd 2003). In the late 1800’s, the U.S. saw a sharp increase in high school enrollment, leading to higher college attendance, creating a need to standardize, measure and compare high school course offerings and student achievement from different schools. Thus, the “credit unit” was established, to represent 120 hours of class/ instructor time on one high school subject, over one academic year.
The translation of this credit unit into its university equivalent began in 1906, with the creation of the Carnegie Foundation and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie’s $10 million endowment to provide retirement pensions for college/university teachers. In order to fairly allocate these funds, precise definitions were needed to identify eligible post-secondary institutions, and to measure teaching time. Building on the high school credit unit, the Carnegie unit was devised for universities, which has since proved indispensable for standardizing degree requirements, accrediting degree-granting institutions, and even supposedly measuring the productivity of teaching faculty, during the early 20th century’s fascination with workplace efficiency and productivity. The Carnegie unit still forms the basis of the university credit system.
Originally, the Carnegie unit only defined in-class time requirements, without mention of corresponding student study time. Somewhere over the past century, however, it became linked to expectations for study hours outside of class, although I have yet to discover when or how this connection was made, nor, more importantly, why 2-3 hours per in-class hour was selected as the appropriate amount of study time, and not, for example, 1 hour, or 4.
Although there’s clearly a correlation between study time and academic success, I haven’t found any solid research support behind this magic number of 2-3 study hours. Regardless, it’s simply not happening for today’s students. One study reviewing academic time investment by full-time students in the US between 1961 and 2003 found overall time, including both in-class and independent study, had declined from an average of 40 hours per week in 1961 to a total of only 27 hours in 2003 (Babcock and Marks, 2010). Findings from the U.S. National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) show that from 2000-2010, full-time undergraduates spent on average about 1 hour of study time per in-class hour. Canadian students are similar – in 2009 and 2010, they were studying on average 14.3 hours weekly outside of class, which translates into slightly less than 1 hour per in-class hour (McCormick, 2011).
So where does this leave us, on the question of study time? At Learning Skills Services, we work with students to help them build the organizational and academic skills needed to become successful independent learners. One of the most important prerequisites for success in any field, including at university, is time management. Although we follow a coaching model where we are not “the experts with all the answers”, students often ask us how much study time they need for academic success. We respond first by explaining the university’s “guided independent study” model of learning, where courses are designed to require more independent study time than in-class time. Next, we remind students that learning is very individual and they are the best experts on themselves. Only then do we suggest a starting guideline number for study time.
Our recommendation is that students begin by scheduling 1.5 hours of independent study time per in-class hour, right from the beginning of term, then pay attention to how this works for them, and adjust accordingly. Why do we recommend 1.5 hrs per in-class hour, instead of the traditional 2-3 hours preferred by most professors?
First, basic math reveals the traditional rule to be not just unrealistic but unreasonable. A typical full-time program calls for at least 15 in-class hours per week. Adding the “ideal” 3 hours of independent study per in-class hour translates into a 60 hour schoolwork week, every week of the term. Not only is that amount of work on a sustained basis unreasonable, it’s also unhealthy. And students simply won’t do it – nor should they have to. As a former colleague of mine used to say: “in Canada we have labour laws limiting the number of hours you are allowed to work in a week!” Even at 2 study hours per in-class hour, that’s still a 45 hour schoolwork week, 5-10 hours more than most full-time jobs. Expecting students to meet this old “2-3 hr guideline” is so unrealistic it pushes them into all or nothing thinking, where they ignore the guideline completely, viewing it as just another impossible, “pie in the sky” directive from adults completely out of touch with reality.
As educators, we must deal with the reality of life in 2019. Cutting back to a more attainable “1.5 hrs per in-class hour” guideline is still significantly more than most students are currently studying, and it also translates into the equivalent of a full-time job, at 37.5 hours per week. That’s a reasonable expectation which makes sense to students. Bear in mind, also, that most York students work part-time in addition to carrying a course load. Adding a 20 hour part-time job to even the 37.5 hour school week we recommend also leads to a near-impossible workload to sustain, which is why we often recommend that students reduce their course load if they have to work part-time more than 10-15 hours a week. No wonder so many students are anxious, and the most common word I hear from them is they are “overwhelmed”. Creating conditions where a student must work at school and a job for 60+ hours a week is not a recipe for academic or personal success, nor for mental health. It promotes anxiety and causes students to look for shortcuts to speed up the learning process, when the deep learning required at university shouldn’t be rushed and takes time – but a reasonable amount of time, not an arbitrary standard dating back over a century that’s virtually impossible for anyone to meet.
References
Babcock, P.S. and Marks, M. (2010) The Falling Time Cost of College: Evidence from Half A Century of Time Use Data. (2010) National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 15954. Retrieved from https://www.nber.org/papers/w15954
McCormick, A.C. (2011) It’s About Time: What To Make Of Reported Declines In How Much College Students Study.Liberal Education, 97 (1). Retrieved from https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/its-about-time-what-make-reported-declines-how-much-college
Paff, L (2017). Questioning the Two Hour Study Rule For Studying. Faculty Focus Higher Ed Teaching Strategies from Magna Publications. Retrieved from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/questioning-two-hour-rule-studying/
Shedd, J.M. (2003). The History of the Student Credit Hour, New Directions for Higher Education, 122 (Summer): 3-12.
About the Author
Cathy Boyd-Withers has worked as a Learning Skills Specialist at York University’s Learning Skills Services for the past 13 years. An educator with a lifelong passion for the transformational power of education, her role as a Learning Skills Specialist is to “help students help themselves” by introducing them to research-supported learning and study strategies and by encouraging self-awareness and fostering a growth mindset where they can build on their own strengths and develop a lifelong love of learning. Her wide-ranging background includes a York PhD in Sociology as well as teaching part-time at the university and college levels earlier in her career.