Mathematic Impossibility of 'the Sucessful College Student'

Mathematic Impossibility of 'the Sucessful College Student'

(This is a follow-up to my earlier rant on the economic injustices of higher education. In this rant I aim explain to you, the reader, why the elusive and mysterious beast known as 'the successful college student' is, in fact, currently an urban legend and a mathematical impossibility.)



They say that necessity is the mother of invention, which explains my current quandary. Here am I, a college student who is nigh-perpetually short on time to accomplish the things he wants to, taking the time to write a short free-form essay (read: rant) to you, good reader, on the very issue of college students not having enough time. I know, I know... on the surface, my argument already sounds like an oxymoron, but one of the things I've come to realize is that when people wait until they have sufficient time to do what ought to be done it never ends up happening. So according to the quote I started with, I WISH I could say I invented a few extra hours for myself to put together this passionate diatribe, but I apparently haven't studied hard enough to know how to DO that yet.

In this brief essay (again: rant) I intend to demonstrate one thing and one thing only: that the fabled creature known as 'the successful college student' simply no longer exists in the read world. Already, however, many of my readers are questioning the validity of what they're reading -- presuming they haven't already tossed this aside and turned on the TV. If you are still reading this, you're probably thinking something along the lines of "But I know successful college students! My (insert relation here) graduated from college not that long ago." Ah, but noble reader... there's something you ought to know. Your friend/relative/neighbor/co-worker/person didn't actually succeed at college. What they did is survived it, most likely by bending or ignoring some part of the system. And, upon my saying (er, writing) that, now you really don't believe me. But let's take a minute to examine this mathematically.

To all of you who, like myself, LOATHE math, I ask you to try your best to stay with me here.

Let's start off with an irrefutable fact. That fact is that our American culture, and I presume almost everyone else, divides up our lives into 24 hour days. Yes, I know that's not quite accurate -- leap year and all that -- but for sake of simplicity we're sticking with 24. Now, according to that all-knowing source of wisdom we call Wikipedia:

"The National Sleep Foundation in the United States maintains that eight to nine hours of sleep for adult humans is optimal and that sufficient sleep benefits alertness, memory and problem solving, and overall health, as well as reducing the risk of accidents. A widely publicized 2003 study performed at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine demonstrated that cognitive performance declines with fewer than eight hours of sleep."

So first on the checklist for the successful student is sufficient sleep. But, hey, let's face facts: most college students don't get a full eight hours on anywhere near a regular basis, as the writer of this article will clearly attest: http://www.utulsa.edu/collegian/article.asp?article=1550. Still, since cognitive performance is essential to doing anything with the lumps in our heads we call brains, a successful college student wouldn't let himself average anything less than 7 hours a day. That's reasonable, right? So we're left with 17 hours a day to work with.

Next, of course, we subtract the time the successful college student purportedly spends in class. Let's see here... most colleges describe a "full time student" as one taking between 12 and 18 credits per semester. Assuming that the successful student would be right in that range, we'll go with the average of the two, 15 credits. Now, whether you're talking about a 100 or 400 level class, most of the classes offered by colleges and universities are 3 credits each. 15 divided by 3 gives us 5 classes/semester. In an ideal and standardized world, these five would meet every other day of the week for exactly an hour.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you, reader, that we do not actually live in such a world.

So, given our data thusfar, the results look something like this:

[24 hours - 7 hours asleep = 17 hours awake]
[17 hours awake x 7 days in a week = 119 hours awake per week]
[Classes A, C, and E meet on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for an hour each day]
[Classes B and D meet on Tuesday and Thursday for an hour each day]
[In one day, A + C + E = 3 hours]
[3 hours x 3 days = 9 hours a week]
[In one day, B + D = 2 hours]
[2 hours X 2 days = 4 hours a week]
[119 - 9 - 4 = 106 hours a week not in class or asleep]

Still don't see what I'm talking about? No? Didn't think so. I would now like to direct your attention to the following url: http://www.unh.edu/fac-senate/pub/StudyHours-5-2-05-IX-M21.htm. From this document emerge three very interesting, very telling numbers: 2,3, and 4.7. The first two numbers refer to the following:

"UNH currently states that the expectation is that students will study (on average) 2-3 hours per week outside of class for every hour spent inside class."

The last number, 4.7, refers to this quote:

"However, according to the information collected by the UNH Center for Teaching Excellence, students currently claim to spend 4.7 hours per week outside of the classroom per class."

Hmm... so according to these people at the University of New Hampshire, the successful college student spends, on average, 3.2 hours per week per class hour studying. Just studying. That doesn't include time spent in class, time spent doing homework, just studying. On my campus I've been told that the formula is 3 hours per week per credit, so apparently UNH is not alone in holding this kind of expectation. Just so we keep working with nice easy numbers, I'm going to put it at 3 hours per week per class hour, giving us the following:

[For A, C, E: 3 study hours x 9 class hours a week = 27 study hours per week]
[For B, D: 3 study hours X 4 class hours a week = 12 study hours per week]
[27 + 12 = 39 study hours per week]
[106 hours a week not in class or asleep - 39 = 67 hours a week not studying, sleeping, or in class]

For a bit of perspective, that comes out to an average of 9 1/2 hours a day left over. This is IF you could evenly space out class and study time across a 7 day week, Saturdays and Sundays included. Now then... where to go from here? Ah! Of course! The mortal bane of every student who has ever sat behind a desk in a modern classroom... the dreaded devourer of schedules and feared filcher of free time, none other than the heavyweight champion of the classroom: HOMEWORK!

Sadly, I couldn't find any direct information regarding how many hours of homework college students average per week. Nor do I expect to see such a study done any time soon, since I'm pretty sure that the numbers would be even more damning then what I'm about to present. In order to guesstimate a very rough idea of the average college homework level, we're going to take what's known as the "10 minute rule" to its logical extreme -- despite the fact that assuming each teacher can figure out about how long a given assignment will take the average student, then spend the time to check with all the other teachers assigning homework that day to make sure of the total isn't a very logical or practical setup to begin with. The basic idea of the "10 minute rule" is this:

[10 x number of the grade level = expected minutes of homework per night]

So, by way of example, a 1st grader would only need to spend ten minutes on their homework whereas a 6th grader would be expected to spend an hour a night. You follow? Good. Now, if we set it up so that a college freshman is in "13th grade" and a college senior is in "16th grade", the numbers come out like this:

[Freshman = 2.16 hours of homework per night = 10.8 hours of homework per week]
[Sophomore = 2.3 hours of homework per night = 11.67 hours of homework per week]
[Junior = 2.5 hours of homework per night = 12.5 hours of homework per week]
[Senior = 2.67 hours of homework per night = 13.33 hours of homework per week]

When it's all said and done, the "10 minute rule" indicates that college students receive an average of just over 12 hours of homework per week. Twelve hours!! That's almost 2 and a half hours a day, leaving our poor "successful" college student with:

[55 hours a week not studying, doing homework, sleeping, or in class = 7 hours a day]

Now then, if some of you are thinking to yourselves "Those college kids have got it easy! Seven extra hours a day... I wish I had seven extra hours!" then I've got news for you. I wish I had seven extra hours too, pal, but I don't. So far I've only tallied up the totals for sleep, classes, studying, and homework, and concluded that college ITSELF requires an average of 10 hours PER DAY, all week long -- more hours per day than most men spent on the job in 2003 (http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/censusandstatistics/a/averageday.htm). That, and enough sleep to keep your brain and body functioning, leaves between six and seven hours daily in which the rest of life -- activities such as eating, going from place to place, and actually COMMUNICATING with other human beings -- can take place.

Oh, wait, we almost forgot something! College requires more than just time and effort. You guessed it: they want money too!

There are three ways that those of us not born with an investment portfolio in our mouths or a rich CEO in the family pay for college. One is to get a job and work our butts off, but that doesn't help with the brutal time crunch at all. Another option is to borrow the funds from our parents (who probably had to borrow most of it from the bank), which usually puts them in debt, causing them to call us up and encourage us to get a job and work out butts off. The third option is, essentially, to borrow time directly from the government -- an esoteric and highly suspect ritual known as "student loans". However, as with any lender Uncle Sam expects payment with interest, and so a slight relief of pressure for four or five years results in ten, twenty, or thirty years of high-pressure slave labor, or the modern equivalent. I think they used to call this "indentured servitude" back in the day.

For those who'd like to see all the relevant math all together, here's the grand tally for a single day:

[SLEEP: 7 hours]
[CLASS TIME: 2.5 hours]
[STUDY TIME: 7.5 hours]
[HOMEWORK TIME: 2.5 hours]
[AVERAGE WORK DAY: 7.5 hours]
[EATING AND DRINKING: 1.2 hours] (http://www.restaurant.org/research/news/story.cfm?ID=332)
-----------------------------------
[GRAND TOTAL: 28.2 hours]

And so I reaffirm my previous, seemingly indefensible statements. Odds are that nearly every student who's graduated from college in the last five -- if not ten -- years has cut some very large corners on the prescribed system for college success. Those with a naturally gifted intelligence can usually get by with studying only for midterms and finals. The clever students find out which assignments weigh heaviest on their grade and only do the "unimportant" ones if they have the time and energy. And people like me usually use the "study in class" strategy of always trying to have a brainy-sounding question ready for the professor, hopefully pulling some key idea or principle out along with the answer. There simply isn't time to do everything the "right" way; those who leave college with a diploma have not, in fact, checked off the entire do-to list or even most of it. Oftentimes we college students do just enough to get by. We're trying to spin a hundred thousand thoughts in our head, attempting to satisfy every professor and every expectation, consistently put in more time on the job -- and it IS a job -- than the vast majority of Americans, and we don't even get paid a dime for it. What we get instead is a mountain of debt on our backs, several YEARS of our lifespan erased by stress, and a bad reputation as slackers, junkies, party-goers, and bums.

THIS is how America treats its FUTURE!

How are we supposed to change the world when we're bound like slaves to debts that never stop growing?

How are we supposed to learn the answers when the questions drown us in frustration and apathy?

How are we supposed to make decisions when the paths in front of us are paved in fire?



Another day, another hour.

Turn up the music a little louder

To drown out the world, just for now.

They say we'll make it, I don't know how.

They say we're light, but we feel lost.

Feeling just a bit like Doctor Faust.

Dancing somewhere between life and death,

With every move tightening the net.

Tell us to learn? Tell us to strive?

To lift the weight you've piled high?

And should we fall we're failures then

For not being Atlas' kin.

And how then will the fates judge you

When it's the needle's eye we must pass through.

Consider, consider, consider the weight!

Consider you now your children’s' fate.



The successful college student is a mythical creature that seldom sleeps, forever pouring over textbooks and assignments in the vainglorious effort to achieve the path of ascension which has been laid out for it by the gods of this world, to whom it regularly offers up vast stores of golden treasure so that it might see the light of wisdom. It now joins the ranks of the unicorn, the griffin, and the mermaid in the catalogues of fictional beings.