Higher Education in America

From 1961 to 2004, according to a series of self-reports from large samples of students, the average amount of time that

From 1985 to 2000, the proportion of freshmen claiming to be bored in class reportedly rose from 26 percent to 40 percent. According to Amy Liu, Jessica Sharkness, and John H. Pryor, HERI Findings from the 2007 Administration of Your First College Year (YFCY) National Aggregates (2008), p. 9, the percentage of freshmen reporting that they were “fre

In a national survey from 2009, half of the seniors reported that they had not written a single paper over

More than 100,000 people worldwide signed up for a course on machine learning but only 13,000 completed the course. Introduction to Data Bases drew 92,000 enrollees but only 7,000 finished.

lower. One study issued by the US Department of Education found that among the high school graduates of 1992 who were college-qualified, only 52 percent of low-income students and 62 percent of middle-income students had entered a four-year college by 1994.

According to this investigation, students averaged 13 hours per week of studying, 12 hours socializing with friends, 11 hours using computers for fun, 6 hours watching television, 6 hours exercising, 5 hours engaging in hobbies, and 3 hours enjoying other forms of entertainment.

Homework accounted for most of the loss, falling from 24.38 hours per week in 1961 to only 14.40 hours in 2004.

Still remaining is the possibility of achieving major cost reductions through the use of online courses. It is quite possible that technology will permit colleges to offer an education of equal (or better) quality with fewer professors and thus bring the same type of cost savings to higher education that industry has long enjoyed through substituti

“[O]NE OF THE MOST sobering insights I had [was] how little intellectual life seemed to matter in college.”