15 hours of homework per week: "It's not enough"

Is college too easy? As study time falls, debate rises (Washington Post)

     Over the past half-century, the amount of time college students actually study — read, write and otherwise prepare for class — has dwindled from 24 hours a week to about 15, survey data show.
     And that invites a question: Has college become too easy?
. . .
     Declining study time is a discomfiting truth about the vaunted U.S. higher-education system. The trend is generating debate over how much students really learn, even as colleges raise tuition every year.
     Some critics say colleges and their students have grown lazy. Today’s collegiate culture, they say, rewards students with high grades for minimal effort and distracts them with athletics, clubs and climbing walls on campuses that increasingly resemble resorts.
     Academic leaders counter that students are as busy as ever but that their attention is consumed in part by jobs they take to help make ends meet.
     Consider George Mason, Virginia’s largest public university and a microcosm of modern academia. Some students care for dependents. Many commute to class. Seventy percent of seniors hold off-campus jobs. George Mason students spend 14 hours, on average, in weekly study, close to the national average.
     “It’s not enough,” said Peter Stearns, the George Mason provost. “And it’s a figure that troubles us, not only at Mason but in higher education generally.”…. (continued)

A good history teacher: "He really seems to care"