Dear Faculty,

I wanted to briefly share some interesting facts about study habits
that you may want to share with your students, especially entering
freshmen.

As a part of our work last year on the Foundations of Excellence Task
Force, we learned that our entering freshmen spend little time outside
of class on their academics. In a survey filled out by freshmen in
October of last year, 1454 respondents indicated the following:

Average number of hours freshmen study outside the classroom per week
-
No. Respondents Percent
0 hours....... 32 2
1-5 hours....... 524 36
6-10 hours...... 456 31
11-15 hours.... 250 17
16-20 hours.... 126 9
21-25 hours.... 48 3
more than 25.. 18 1

In other words, 69 percent of our freshmen study 10 or fewer hours a
week outside of class, with 38 percent who study 5 or fewer hours a
week. Only 4 percent study more than 20 hours each week.

According to the Higher Education Research Institute and National
Assessment of Educational Progress, 66 percent of high school seniors
spend less than 5 hours a week doing homework. This is understandable,
to some degree, because high school students are in classes roughly 6
hours a day, 5 days a week. When you add 5 hours a week of homework
with 30 hours of class time, high school students are already putting in
approximately 35 hours a week on schoolwork. The problem is high school
students bring these same study habits to college, and as you know
college is much different than high school. For example, students in
college attend classes approximately 15 hours a week versus 30, and
college instructors have much higher expectations and requirements in
terms of assigned readings, research projects, homework assignments,
etc.

According to college experts, the rule of thumb is for every one hour
in class, students should spend approximately two hours outside of class
studying and doing homework. I encourage students to view their
academics as a full-time job. If they spend 15 hours a week in class,
they need to spend approximately 25 to 30 hours outside of class doing
homework, making it a 40 to 45 hour academic work-week.

We know a significant number of our entering freshmen are not meeting
their academic potential, probably due to lack of study time. Nearly 30
to 40 percent of our freshmen lose their academic scholarships. In fall
of 2002, the average high school grade point average (GPA) for entering
UCA freshmen was 3.4. The average GPA for the same group of students at
the end of fall semester their freshman year at UCA was 2.63.

Please share this information with our entering freshmen, if you deem
appropriate. Good luck with the beginning of fall semester.

Gary Roberts
Dean of Students
_______________________________________________
Ucanet-l mailing list
Ucanet-l@...
http://list.uca.edu/mailman/listinfo/ucanet-l