Study Time

Here is a chart, from Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks' study “The Falling Time Cost of College: Evidence from Half a Century of Time Use Data.”,  that helps explain why America is falling behind:

The typical engineering major today spends only 18.5 hours per week studying. The typical social sciences major spends about 14.6 hours, down by almost half from 1960. This is, no doubt, part of the transformation of undergraduate college from a serious academic experience to a very, very expensive party. And no doubt this is part of the reason why there is only one US college in the top ten in yesterday's post about the Collegiate Computing Contest.