An Unsuccessful Attempt to Increase Student Study Time and Performance
Uros Petronijevic, LA&PS
*Note: This blog post is adapted from the Vox column “The disappointing impact of encouraging students to study more,” which is available here: https://voxeu.org/article/disappointing-impact-encouraging-students-study-more
Over the last 50 years there has been a large decline in the amount of time college students spend studying. Between 1961 and 2004, study time fell from an average of 24 hours a week to approximately 11 hours per week and the fraction of students studying fewer than five hours a week increased from 7 percent to 25 percent (Babcock and Marks 2011). Such levels of study time are concerning because most university administrators recommend between 2 to 3 hours of study time for each hour of lecture, implying between 25 to 35 hours of studying outside of class for a full-time student. Of course, study quality, course content, and other factors also help determine how much study time is needed. But even the most promising students are unlikely to perform up to their potential without devoting enough time to course material. The most convincing research supports the view that students would perform better if they studied more (Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner 2008, Lindo et al. 2012, and Grodner and Rupp 2013).
In a new study (Oreopoulos et al. 2018), we describe our effort to increase study time and subsequent academic achievement at three distinct university campuses: Western Governor’s University (WGU), an asynchronous online university, and two traditional campuses in the University of Toronto (U of T) system. The median student at WGU logs on to their online platform only two days a week, while one-fifth of U of T students study only five hours per week or less. A lack of available time is not what is keeping students from consistently studying more, as no students at U of T report having fewer than 30 hours per week available for study after considering other anticipated binding commitments.
We further designed and implemented two low-cost experiments, one in a sample of over 6,000 students at WGU and one in a sample of over 3,500 students at U of T. At all sites, students randomly assigned to the treatment group were provided online information at the start of the semester to motivate the benefits of study time. They then completed a detailed weekly calendar with regular study time, which they could transfer to the electronic calendars on their phones or computers. We also encouraged students at the U of T campuses to provide their phone numbers to receive reminders and study tips and gain access to a virtual coach. Students at WGU were encouraged to download a mobile application to also receive reminders throughout the academic year.
Both programs were well received, as students appeared to be highly engaged in the planning and coaching aspects. They created detailed weekly study plans, responded thoughtfully to questions about anticipating challenges throughout the semester, and almost half of U of T’s participants engaged regularly with their coaches by responding to text messages each week. Despite this, we found no impact on academic outcomes across all campuses, both on average and after investigating potentially heterogeneous treatment effects across several student subgroups.
Why were students unresponsive to the intervention and what more could be done? One possibility is that students do not want to study more because doing so does not compare favorably to the alternative of settling for lower grades while enjoying more free time for other activities. Most students in our sample do eventually receive their degrees (at U of T) or have a fallback career if they do not graduate (at WGU). Another possibility is that students are unsure about how additional study time translates into higher grades or about the benefits of attaining higher grades on post-graduation outcomes. Under either scenario, the ambiguity around the benefits of increasing study time could prevent students from putting forth the costly effort. A fruitful area for future research is aiming to better understand student motivations, goals, and perceptions when it comes to effort investments during their time in university.
References
Babcock Philip and Mindy Marks. 2011. “The Falling Time Cost of College: Evidence form Half a Century of Time Use Data.” The Review of Economics and Statistics. 93(2): 468-478.
Grodner, Andrew and Nicholas Rupp. 2013, “The Role of Homework in Student Learning Outcomes: Evidence from a Field Experiment.” The Journal of Economic Education. 44(2): 93-109.
Lindo, Jason M., Isaac D. Swensen, and Glen R. Waddell. 2012. “Are Big-Time Sports a Threat to Student Achievement?” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. 4(4): 254-74.
Oreopoulos, Philip, Richard Patterson, Uros Petronijevic, and Nolan Pope. 2018. “Lack of Study Time is the Problem, but What is the Solution? Unsuccessful Attempts to Help Traditional and Online College Students.” NBER Working Paper No. 25036. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Stinebrickner, Ralph and Todd R. Stinebrickner. 2008. “The Causal Effect of Studying on Academic Performance.” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. 8(1): 1-55.
