Education Report Roundup

High School Workload Seen Relatively Easy

By Lynn Olson — May 17, 2005 1 min read
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High school students may be less ready for college than they think, concludes a comparison of results from three national surveys.

Read the report “Getting Students Ready For College: What Student Engagement Data Can Tell Us,” a publication based on the High School Survey of Student Engagement results compiled by researchers at Indiana University Bloomington.

For example, first-year college students spend more than twice as many hours per week preparing for class than do high school seniors, according to a study by researchers at Indiana University Bloomington.

Their paper compared the results from three national surveys conducted by the university. The High School Survey of Student Engagement surveyed 90,530 high school students in 26 states in 2004. Its results were compared with those from a survey of more than 900,000 students at four-year colleges, and another survey of 92,000 community college students.

Half the first-year college students reported spending more than 10 hours a week studying outside class, compared with only 8 percent of high school seniors. Of the community college students with fewer than 30 credit hours completed, one-quarter spent 11 or more hours preparing for courses each week.

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