STATE STUDY INDICATES UNIVERSITY STUDY ONLY HOUR A DAY

Full-time students at Missouri's 13 public four-year colleges and universities spend about an hour a day studying, a survey by the Coordinating Board for Higher Education suggests.

"If that's the case, it's terrible," Charles McClain, the state's higher education commissioner, said Tuesday.

"I really do think that Americans need to get an inoculation of hard work again into their system.

"If we are going to maintain our standard of living ... I think we are just going to have to rediscover the value of hard work, the value of intellectual hard work," said McClain.

"We have used our brawn more than our brain historically (as) in taming the Wild West," he said.

McClain said the survey includes a cross-section of students. "That includes students who are going to drop out, flunk out and all those kinds of things."

But McClain said he also knows there are many students at the top end who are "studying a lot of hours a week and doing quite well."

The survey found that on average, four-year students devote 22 hours a week to course-related activities, practicums and internships.

Since full-time students typically carry loads of 12 to 15 hours of classes a week, it's estimated that such students are probably spending on average of only one hour a day studying outside of class, coordinating board officials said.

But Charles Kupchella, Southeast Missouri State University provost, questions the conclusion.

Kupchella said the survey question was "nested" in a question about activities outside of class.

He said the 22-hours-a-week figure actually may account for time spent on academic activities outside the classroom.

"That (then) is absolutely consistent on what we think it takes to survive in class these days," said Kupchella.

"I think students are wise enough to know, as an aggregate group, you get as much out of college as you put into it," he said.

Students at the state's 16 community colleges reported devoting almost 21 hours a week to academic activities.

The survey of nearly 7,200 students in Missouri's public colleges and universities was conducted in the 1992-93 school year. A total of 3,581 community college students and 3,610 students at four-year institutions were surveyed.

Students said the primary factor in choosing a college or university was cost (34 percent among community college students and 26 percent among those at four-year institutions).

Proximity to their family or job ranked second at 27 and 25 percent, respectively, followed by specific academic program offerings at 15 percent for community college students and 16 percent for those at four-year schools, the survey showed.

Eight percent of students at four-year schools and 5 percent of those at community colleges based their choice on the availability of financial aid. Only 9 percent of students at four-year schools chose their institution based on academic reputation, the survey found.

"I think cost plays an important role in a person's choice of an institution," said Jeff Davis, Student Government president at Southeast Missouri State University.

Davis said a related factor is the proximity of the school to one's home. Students who commute can live at home, cutting down on costs, he said.

"For a person who lives in Cape, it is so much cheaper to go to school here and live at home than to go anywhere else," he said.

Davis, who is from Braggadocio, deep in the Missouri Bootheel, said his decision to attend Southeast was "purely economics."

"They said you can come here for four years and make a 3.5 (grade-point average) and you can go here for free," said Davis.

The academic reputation of a school is not a major factor, at least initially, for students, he said.

"I think reputation begins to take hold as a person gets older and they graduate and filter into the job market," said Davis.

As to the survey's finding that students spend only about an hour a day studying, Davis said, "Honestly, it seems about right to me."

The rule of thumb, he said, is that a student should spend about three hours studying for every hour in class. But Davis said, "I know very few students who actually devote that much time to their studies."

Students often study in spurts, spending hours cramming for a test one day while not cracking the books the next, said Davis.

Kupchella agreed with the survey's finding that cost and location are the major determining factors in the selection of a college or university.

"Academic reputation is something that students don't give a lot of weight to, relative to the other things," he said.

McClain, himself, grew up in St. Clair in eastern Missouri, but chose to enroll at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield in 1947 because, he said, he could take a bus down Route 66 to get there.

McClain said that on the individual level the amount of time a student studies depends in part on the expectations of the faculty member teaching that course. If the faculty member has high expectations of the class and demands more of his or her students, they will probably study more, said McClain.

"The more rigorous the school, the more hours the student studies," he said.

McClain said he hopes the survey will promote discussion on Missouri's college campuses.