Well, when I was at Uni, in the late 80s and early 90s, those were the sorts of hours you needed to put in to be successful, and I was doing a Bachelor of Computing, my friends doing Comp Sci, did similar hours and those doing Engineering did more because they had up to 30 hours contact time, but still had to do lots outside as well. The big difference from today is that failing wasn’t such a big thing then, students didn’t work, students failed and they came back and repeated multiple times, it’s far more serious now to fail courses than 20 years ago. I was also teaching in Comp Sci in the late 90s and I assure you that my courses required 10-12 hours a week to do any good in, unless you were an exceptional student.

Heh, maybe you went to a more demanding uni, but it wasn’t my experience in the early 90s doing engineering and computer science. Engineering did have a lot of contact hours and scheduling of lectures was very poor but perhaps couldn’t be helped. The comp sci load and difficulty in comparison was a whole lot easier. But most people I knew weren’t pushed nearly as hard as you describe in terms of studying time. Except for just before exams where people really did cram.

I think you make a good point about maturity. Having later been working full time and doing post graduate studies part time I learnt to be a whole lot more focused and efficient. And if I had worked the same way during uni I would have had a lot more free time (and got better marks). Which explained why the mature age students generally did pretty well when I did my undergraduate degree even though they often had jobs and/or family commitments.

2) they are way underpowered even for word processing and spreadsheets, let alone programming or anything else serious.

Thats interesting to hear. I’ve only played around with them, but have certainly heard good things about them as tools for word processing/email/web browsing. For programming I can understand that they could well be a bit underpowered if universities are expecting students to develop large projects on their own machines. Back in the 90s we were expected to do all the work in the labs and remote access was very difficult to get.

I’m certainly not simplistic enough to blame you and only you, but neither am I going to read about your actions and say ‘gosh that’s nice for you’ and not point our your responsibility – I mean, what were you expecting, congratulations?

Martin @ 89 – its possible expectations of studying hours at university have changed significantly in the last decade or 2, but at least in the mid 90s, with the exception of cramming around exam time, students studying for that many hours was quite rare – and there certainly wasn’t that sort of expectation (engineering/computer science faculties).

Well, when I was at Uni, in the late 80s and early 90s, those were the sorts of hours you needed to put in to be successful, and I was doing a Bachelor of Computing, my friends doing Comp Sci, did similar hours and those doing Engineering did more because they had up to 30 hours contact time, but still had to do lots outside as well. The big difference from today is that failing wasn’t such a big thing then, students didn’t work, students failed and they came back and repeated multiple times, it’s far more serious now to fail courses than 20 years ago. I was also teaching in Comp Sci in the late 90s and I assure you that my courses required 10-12 hours a week to do any good in, unless you were an exceptional student.

But I can also tell you that today lots of students think that they can get away with doing less than their 40 hours, and some can, but nowhere near as many as think they can, and very few could get away with doing less than 30 hours a week.

My wrists continuously remind me that spending substantial time on any kind of laptop keyboard is not really practical, but an external keyboard/mouse is both cheap and portable.

These have really only been available this year at that cost and form factor and the ASUS EEE PC is a very neat machine, especially with Linux, and I have several students who use them, but the unanimous opinion is that while very useful, there’s no way they can replace a proper notebook/desktop, as

1) the screen is way too small, which means buying an external monitor as well, which is not a trivial cost

2) they are way underpowered even for word processing and spreadsheets, let alone programming or anything else serious.

It’s interesting to note that ASUS have moved to a bigger form factor in their later models, to be only slightly smaller than a basic notebook.

cheers

Martin

We all gotta blame someone don’t we…

Given how much time a student should be spending working on their computer, using a netbook is not really practical and definitely isn’t ergonomic.

My wrists continuously remind me that spending substantial time on any kind of laptop keyboard is not really practical, but an external keyboard/mouse is both cheap and portable.

FWIW I agree with you about where the number of hours working affects studying and there are some students out there who do need more financial support so they are not forced to work excessive hours. In terms of computers these days though I think consumers get sucked into spending a lot more than they actually need – its not restricted to students.

Take it you managed to somehow lie / get around what was at any rate a necessary ‘proving factor’ for me, which was to move out of home for a min. of 2 weeks? I ended up in an Anglicare shelter for 2 weeks, including a ‘fun’ assault by a drug addict. It was just fab. So thanks again.

40-48 hours study
20 hours part-time study
1 hour travel time each day (only if you can afford to live in the inner city)

Adds up to 65 to 73 hours a week. This is very hard for the average 18 year old. Hell, that sort of work week is hard for nearly anyone. We all like to think we are very grown up by the time we finish school but I can tell you very few students are fully grown up by then. Students gain a lot of maturity over their degree. And of course they better not get sick or hurt themselves during the year.

It’s quite clear from my experience that up to 15 hours of week doesn’t hurt student performance at uni, but over 15 starts to impact and over 20 hours a week, most students find it impacts significantly on their Uni performance. So looking at
rates of pay for a 18 year old first year:

Waiter – 11.16 (20 * 11.16) = $223.20 * 32 = $7,142.40
$446.40 * 18 = $8,031.60
= $15,174.00

After tax = $14,547.9 / 52 = $279.76

Given that a share house costs at least $120/week and most are in the $150 range, then add on food and utilities and study costs, not counting initial set up costs
for living away from home, a student is going to have a very hard and lean time
in that first year. In my opinion, too hard for the average 18 year old for them to actually settle down and study effectively. Of course if Mum and Dad are putting in a chunk of money as well, then life will be easier, but that assumes that they can put in. What we want is for students at universities to spend their time actually studying and learning and developing the skills and knowledge and understandings and attributes to make them effective professionals, not just learning how to make do and do the bare minimum to survive and pass.

Re: 60 Chris (a different one)

Given how much time a student should be spending working on their computer, using a netbook is not really practical and definitely isn’t ergonomic.

As I keep telling my students, studying at university is a full-time job, and for the average 18 year old Uni student, it is a hard task managing the transition from school, adding a hand to mouth existence on top of that is one of the reasons a lot of students don’t make it through.

As far as the argument, that they are going to make lots of money, yes they are, and that’s why we have a progressive taxation system.

Hmmm, this is not good.

They’ll be poor when all that credit finally catches up with them.

Thankfully, I got in before it became much more difficult to claim for this. A letter from my grandmother (which I wrote) and one from the girlfriend’s mother (which I wrote) plus a phone call to my parents from Centrelink (I think) was all it took. My parents supported this, albeit a little reluctantly, on the basis that Mum worked in welfare and was thoroughly pissed off at the rorting done by others claiming one government benefit or another. “All these other bastards are getting my taxes, why shouldn’t you?” was her paraphrased attitude.

It was only an arts degree, and life was much cheaper than then, but I’d hate to be a student reliant upon part-time work for an income these days.