What's college for, anyhow? [Do they study at Harvard?]

Aden Barton, AWOL from Academics, Harvard Magazine, March-April 2024.

I recently started using an application that tracks my work, producing weekly summaries of time spent on each activity, such as homework, socializing, or eating a meal. I was surprised to find I spend far, far less time on my classes than on my extracurricular activities—working as a research assistant, editing columns for the Crimson, or writing for Harvard Magazine. It turns out that I’m not alone in my meager coursework. Although the average college student spent around 25 hours a week studying in 1960, the average was closer to 15 hours in 2015.

I’ve come to believe that this decline represents a fundamental and under-discussed transformation in how students—especially Harvard students—view school. Many onlookers and alumni likely have a sense of this trend, but I doubt they realize the full extent of it. This fall, one of my friends did not attend a single lecture or class section until more than a month into the semester. Another spent 40 to 80 hours a week on her preprofessional club, leaving barely any time for school. A third launched a startup while enrolled, leaving studying by the wayside.

These extreme examples are outliers. But still, for many students, instead of being the core part of college, class is simply another item on their to-do list, no different from their consulting club presentation or their student newspaper article. Harvard has increasingly become a place in Cambridge for bright students to gather—that happens to offer lectures on the side.

In stark contrast, English professor James Engell told me that when he was a Harvard student, “there was a sense…that the primary reason for your being in the College was to take courses, and to spend a lot of time on them”—a belief which, in his eyes, has “eroded some.” Indeed, data from the Crimson’s senior survey indicates that students devote nearly as much time collectively to extracurriculars, athletics, and employment as to their classes.

That erosion of a focus on academics has certainly been present in my Harvard experience, as evidenced by my experiment in time tracking. As I approach graduation, I’ve been asking myself why.

Barton lays some of the blame on grade inflation. There's also a shift in attitude:

This attitude is one manifestation of what Fischman and Gardner call a “transactional model” of college. According to their book, a so-called transactional student “goes to college and does what (and only what) is required to get a degree and then secure placement in graduate school and/or a job; college is viewed principally, perhaps entirely, as a springboard for future-oriented ambitions.” I’m ashamed to admit that this approach has all too often fit my own approach to school, and I can’t help but notice that it also describes many of those around me.

They found that almost half of students (45 percent) approached college with a transactional mindset. Engell used the very same language: “We have reached a point where the norm is generally to see courses as transactional.” These comments perfectly match my Harvard experience. I’ve noticed that I often internalize readings or assignments only insofar as they help me to succeed in a class, leaving no time to genuinely ruminate on the material