Majors that demand the most Study Time

Surprise!  The amount of time you spend studying may depend on what major you choose.

According to the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), students in engineering spend the most time studying, while business students report spending the least amount of time hitting the books.

And professors in these fields seem blissfully unaware of how hard students are really working.

Using data from 31 colleges and universities, NSSE compared the time full-time seniors spent preparing for class with faculty expectations and perceptions across eight disciplinary categories.

Compared to faculty expectations, students in most fields studies one to two hours less per week than what most faculty expected.  In only two fields, engineering and “other professional,” did students exceed faculty expectations.

But the greatest differences were the faculty beliefs about how much time students actually spent studying.  On average, full-time seniors reported spending five to eight more hours per week preparing for class than what faculty believed they spent.

NSSE proposes that this might be because students had “insufficient opportunities to demonstrate what they learned” or because their performance fell short of expectations. 

In other words, grades on the single final exam in the course weren’t as high as professors expected they should be.

For the record, NSSE lists the following majors as requiring the highest level of time commitment for students:

1. Engineering:  students spend an average of 18 hours per week prepping for class
2. Physical Sciences: students spend an average of 17 hours per week prepping for class
3. Arts and Humanities:  students spend an average of 17 hours per week prepping for class
4. Education:  students spend an average of 15 hours per week prepping for class
5. Social Sciences:  students spend an average of 14 hours per week prepping for class
6. Business:  students spend an average of 14 hours per week prepping for class

Note that full-time, first-year students averaged about 15 hours per week getting ready for class, and seniors averaged 15.5 hours.  And women typically spend more time studying than men—an hour more among freshmen and 40 minutes more among seniors.