"no Books Please; We’re Student

Summary of John Leo’s “No Books, Please; we’re students”

“Current college students are more easily bored and considerably less willing to work hard,” states John Leo. However, Leo give the students the benefit of the doubt, saying, two factors that cause students to become disengaged in their study are jobs and family responsibilities Nevertheless, Leo believes that current students are becoming more disengaged from the academic experience. Leo supports his opinion by using the latest survey put out by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute; a paper written by a chemistry professor, Henry Bauer of Virginia Tech; and a book called Generation X Goes to College, written by “Peter Sacks.”

Leo’s first source of support is UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute. According to the latest (1995) UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute’s survey of college freshmen put out each year, only 35% of students report that they spent six or more hours a week doing homework or studying during their senior year in high school, down from 43.7% in 1987. The survey also reports the hightest percentage ever of students being bored in class, 33.9%.

Next, Leo discuss a paper written by Henry Bauer, a chemistry professor, at Virginia Tech. Bauer has kept charts for ten years, showing that his students had done progressively worse on the final exams than midterm quizzes, even though the students knew that the same questions on the midterm quizzes will show up on final exams. According to the Bauer’s paper, a number of students expect good grades without ever attending class. “I found my students progressively more ignorant, inattentive, inarticulate,” states a professor from Southern