It’s easy to focus on serious study at many top schools. It’s just NOT easy NOT to at UChicago. Perhaps that’s the difference between the College and other places.
Right. I agree with that characterization. Part of the unique character of Chicago is the centrality of the classroom for everyone.
I don’t know if that makes poor kids more hot to get married, or the world a better place, but it makes Chicago recognizably Chicago.
“The centrality of the classroom” might be just the factor that unites rich and poor alike In a common endeavor: Academic survival. In this case, study group takes precedence over social group. Or perhaps it substitutes for the latter. Hadn’t thought of this potential benefit of the Core till now but is it possible that it serves to break down economic as well as intellectual barriers?
Half-empty lecture halls are no sign of a thriving intellectual environment, but well-attended ones with engaged and inquisitive students just might be. In any case, they are more likely to be associated with such an environment. I think most of us would agree that you need this kind of environment in order to have advances in science, or the humanities, or social thought. In other words, those advances that help make the world a better place. A top university wouldn’t think to encourage its PhD candidates or faculty to prioritize extracurriculars over study and research. Not sure why so many of them seem to allow more of a summer camp approach for their undergrads.
In these multi-thread discussions about whether Chicago and Harvard are pretty similar, and if not, which is better, certain terms are carrying a lot of weight. I am wondering how posters would describe the dividing line between “academics”/things that “bookish” students do, and the many other activities young people at universities like Chicago and Harvard spend their time on. Many of the school-sanctioned extracurricular activities (“RSOs”), and, for that matter, many of the casual social interactions at a college like Chicago seem to be heavily infused with the intellectual. That, in our family’s view, is a huge plus. In fact, some of the RSO activities seem to be more intellectual and “deep” than at least a few of the classes.
What is the difference between “work” and “leisure”? Is it simply that “work” is anything that the grown-ups assign and control and grade, and “leisure” is everything else?
What is the ideal amount of time spent on “work” during college?
I personally wouldn’t want to be paying well over $200 per hour for my kid’s unattended classes; if all we want to create is opportunities for extremely intelligent and intellectual young people to live together and interact, in intellectual and non-intellectual ways, without a lot of adult guidance, we could do that more cheaply.
But as a parent raising two intellectual and creative kids, and as a person who values deep friendships, I’m both glad that Chicago seems to be a haven for intellectual kids and glad that it now seems to allow for, and encourage, students to spend some time on things other holing up in their rooms reading assigned books and doing problems sets every waking hour … if that’s what Chicago was actually like in the past (my husband didn’t experience it that way, and he went during a period when the dropout rate was very high, but maybe he and his friends were anomalies, I don’t know).
I remember my mother, who attended a fairly selective university in the late 50s, saying that college students were expected to spend 2 or possibly as much as 3 hours studying outside of class per hour of class time. With 12-15 hours of class, that’s 36 to 60 hours of time spent on class / assigned school work each week. 36 to 50 hours a week of school work (with maybe an extra chunk around midterms or finals or big paper times) still leaves plenty of time for enough sleep, for self-selected activities, and even for some paid work. The rule of thumb seems reasonable to me, creating a good balance between assigned work and self-chosen activities (including both more intellectual and less intellectual activities - perhaps more of the former at a place like Chicago, which another reason - in addition to the quality of education available at Chicago - that a kid who doesn’t want to spend every waking moment on assigned school work might still prefer Chicago to many other places).
Students repeatedly skipping classes seems like a huge waste (as Pinker suggested). When I read a report that at some selective and extremely expensive university, students study on average fewer than 15 hours a week, that seems like probably too little. When the roommate matching form of our state flagship has 5 answer choices for “how much you expect to study each week” and the lowest choice is “less than 3 hours” and the highest is “13+ hours”, I have the same reaction.
But when I read or hear Chicago (or other) students of yesterday or today complaining or bragging about getting inadequate sleep (something repeatedly proven to seriously interfere with learning), I think that is also sad and a waste. Same when I read a student at Grinnell saying "Sometimes you feel as if you’re surrounded by the coolest people you’ll ever meet, but you have little time to enjoy them.”
The Golden Mean, people.