Homework is a part of every Bluffton student’s college career. Students can spend hours upon hours working on homework from several classes each semester. But how much time should students spend on homework, and how much time do they actually spend?
“You know the recommendation, two hours out of class for every hour in,” said Registrar Iris Neufeld. “So for an average 15-hour load it would be 30 hours study time.”
But does anyone actually spend the recommended amount of time? Neufeld said yes, some do.
“Maybe five years ago, someone said, ‘Well nobody studies 30 hours a week,’ ” said Neufeld. “I asked maybe 10 people doing really well, like 4.0s and 3.9, in that range, how much they studied a week… those reports ranged somewhere from 20 to 40.”
Neufeld said of the students she worked with who were on academic probation, the majority had self-reported working on homework from a range of zero hours a week to 10 hours.
“Some studies show that the two groups that study the most are the students doing really well and the students struggling, as they may be a group that needs more time,” said Neufeld.
Despite this, students who feel they are doing well in class said they spend less than that amount of time working on assignments. Senior chemistry and physics double major Levi Litwiller said he spends about 10 to 15 hours a week on homework, but feels he is spending enough time.
“I would say there are some assignments that take longer than they should,” said Litwiller. “In theory, I could get them done faster, but I get distracted easily.”
Litwiller said this semester he has a 12-credit-hour week. He said he also works in the Marbeck mail room 10 hours each week, but that this doesn’t impact his study habits and his GPA remains very high.
“I still have plenty of time to get homework done even with that campus job,” said Litwiller.
Another student, senior business and sport management major Connor Gulick, said he’s had similar experiences, spending only three to four hours total on homework, including study time, each week.
“I think I do enough,” said Gulick. “My classes, they really don’t give too much homework out, but when I do get it, it doesn’t usually take me too long to get it done.”
Gulick’s semester is a 15-credit-hour week, and he participates in multiple extracurricular activities. Specifically, he is a member of the cross-country and track teams, an assistant for the cross-country team and a ministry assistant. Despite this, he is also satisfied with his GPA, and also feels his responsibilities do not cause him to spend less time on work.
“I think it’s just more of not having a lot of it,” said Gulick.
Despite some of the low numbers, Neufeld said she feels Bluffton is doing fairly well overall. While course evaluations also contain self-reported hours, a request to see general statistics from these evaluations was denied.
“Our pattern has been not to make public results from course evaluations,” said Dean of Academic Affairs Lamar Nisly.
