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“About 20% of college students say they frequently come to class without completing readings or assignments, a national survey shows. And many of those students say they mostly still get A’s.

The boy's apparently looking at his blog, though I doubt he would normally just stare at his screen in a forlorn manner. Credit: Kiichiro Sato, AP

According to this USAToday article, college students are becoming slackers who “get away with” not doing their assigned readings – i.e. the intellectual lives of college students are deteriorating! Problem is, I think this claim is bull – or, at the very least, it says nothing new. I can’t imagine that college students have always done their readings and homework for every single class. I’m sure that plenty of undergrads “get away with” poor preparation all the time, what with their other demanding courses, activities, and social lives to attend to. So even though “[t]he survey doesn’t address whether those students are lazy, busy, intimidated, bored or geniuses,” it probably should – because then it might accurately account for the reasons why students don’t always prepare for class according to their professors’ expectations.

This is not to say that some college students aren’t slackers.  In fact, the whole reason I heard about this article was because my TA brought it to the our attention – he wanted to emphasize his disappointment in those of my classmates who regularly fail to attend lecture.  While those specific absentees could qualify as slacker-types, I doubt they’ll be walking away from this course with A’s.  So that leaves the rest of the class – people who attend lecture but don’t always come to class “prepared.” The article refers specifically to these students, after all – “students frequently come to class without completing readings or assignments.” Right.  They still come to class.  Rather than implying that teachers hand out good grades to undeserving students, this study potentially measure professors’ effectiveness; if students only attend their professors’ lectures without finishing the reading and subsequently get A’s, their knowledge of the material can largely be attributed to their professors’ explanations.

Perhaps this college generation’s knack for “cutting corners” in completing assigned work reflects the transition to a new method of time management and knowledge consumption – say, a more fragmented, albeit efficient one?  Current college students have a very different kind of attention span.  They’re accustomed to multi-tasking; they absorb information from a website while chatting on AIM, texting friends, and simultaneously watching The Office.  Though their attention is more fragmented, students have essentially developed the capability to quickly draw out the key messages/points within most anything, whether it be an article, email, or assigned reading.  This skill can trasnfer to the way in which students complete their assigned readings as well; combined with their knowledge from lecture, it enables students to skim each dense reading for its most important sections.  In the end, students work more efficiently while still learning the material.  The hours they save can then be spent on other homework, hanging out with friends, or catching up on much-needed sleep.

Though my argument might not be convincing (I may be naive in assuming that people still do most of their readings – or I’m just surrounded by those that do), this article’s claim is weak and small in comparison to other problems with universities.  It should be more of a concern that undeserving students who come from wealthy, legacy-and-money-donating families manage to pass their courses.

What is/was your experience with this issue as a college student?