how many assignments a week in college

Course Workload Estimator

A blog post that describes the genesis of this estimator, as well as some of its potential uses, can be read here . You can also find a stand-alone version of the estimator that can be embedded into your site here .

Estimation Details

Somewhat surprisingly, there is very little research about the amount of time it takes the average college student to complete common academic tasks. We have self-reported estimates of how much total time they spend on academic work outside of class (12-15 hours), but we don't know much about the quality and quantity of the work that is produced in that time frame (let alone how the time is allocated to different tasks). We also know quite a bit about how students tackle common academic tasks , but those studies rarely ask students to report on how long it takes them to complete the task (whether reading a book, writing a paper, or studying for an exam). The testing literature provides some clues (because valid instrument design depends on data about the average speed of test takers), but it's tough to generalize from the experience of taking high-stakes, timed tests to the experience of working on an assignment in the comfort of your dorm. And while there is a sizable literature on reading, the nature and purpose of the reading tasks in these experiments are also quite different from what students typically encounter in college.

All of which is to say the estimates above are just that: estimates .

To arrive at our estimates, we began with what we knew from the literature and then filled in the gaps by making a few key assumptions. The details of our calculations are below. If you still find our assumptions unreasonable, however, the estimator allows you to manually adjust our estimated rates. We also welcome those who have knowledge of research about which we are unaware to suggest improvements.

Reading Rates

Of all the work students might do outside of class, we know the most about their reading. Educators, cognitive psychologists, and linguists have been studying how human beings read for more than a century. One of the best summaries of this extensive literature is the late Keith Rayner's recently published " So Much to Read, So Little Time: How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help? " A central insight of this piece (along with the literature it summarizes) is that none of us read at a constant rate. Instead, we use varying rates that depend on the difficulty and purpose of the reading task (Rayner et al., 2016; Love, 2012; Aronson, 1983; Carver, 1983, 1992; Jay and Dahl, 1975; Parker, 1962; Carrillo and Sheldon, 1952; Robinson, 1941). Another obvious (but rarely acknowledged) insight is that a page-based reading rate is going to vary by the number of words on the page. As a result, our estimator assumes that reading rate will be a function of three factors: 1) page density, 2) text difficulty, and 3) reading purpose. For the sake of simplicity, we limited the variation within each factor to three levels.

Page Density*

• 450 words: Typical of paperback pages, as well as the 6" x 9" pages of academic journal articles
• 600 words: Typical of academic monograph pages
• 750 words: Typical of textbook pages that are 25% images, as well as the full-size pages of two-column academic journal articles

* estimates were determined by direct sampling of texts in our personal collection

Text Difficulty

• No New Concepts: The reader knows the meaning of each word and has enough background knowledge to immediately understand the ideas expressed
• Some New Concepts: The reader is unfamiliar with the meaning of some words and doesn't have enough background knowledge to immediately understand some of the ideas expressed.
• Many New Concepts: The reader is unfamiliar with the meaning of many words and doesn't have enough background knowledge to immediately understand most of the ideas expressed

Reading Purpose

• Survey: Reading to survey main ideas; OK to skip entire portions of text
• Understand: Reading to understand the meaning of each sentence
• Engage: Reading while also working problems, drawing inferences, questioning, and evaluating

What we know from the research:

The optimal reading rate of the skilled adult reader (including college students) is around 300 words per minute. This assumes a "normal" reading environment in which there are no new words or concepts in the text and the purpose of the reading is to understand the meaning of each sentence (Rayner et al., 2016; Carver, 1982).

Adults can read faster than 300 words per minute, but if the goal is to understand the meaning of sentences, rates beyond 300 words per minute reduce comprehension in a near linear fashion (Zacks and Treiman, 2016; Love, 2012; Carver, 1982).

The default reading rates of college students under these normal conditions can range from 100-400 words per minute (Rayner et al., 2016; Siegenthaler et al., 2011; Acheson et al., 2008; Carver, 1982, 1983, 1992; Underwood et al., 1990; Hausfeld, 1981; Just and Carpenter, 1980; Jay and Dahl, 1975; Grob, 1970; McLaughlin, 1969; Robinson and Hall, 1941).

There is no real upper limit on skimming speeds, but the average college student skims for main ideas at rates between 450 and 600 words per minute (Rayner et al., 2016; Carver 1992; Just and Carpenter, 1980; Jay and Dahl, 1975)

In conditions where the material is more difficult (i.e., with some new words and concepts), the optimal reading rate slows to 200 words per minute (Carver, 1992).

In conditions where the purpose is to memorize the text for later recall, the optimal reading rate slows even further to 138 words per minute or lower (Carver, 1992).

Although this has not been measured (to our knowledge), reading experts have argued that it is perfectly reasonable to slow down to rates below 50 words per minute if the goal is to engage a text (Parker, 1962).

What we don't know, but deduce and/or stipulate:

Given that the rates above were discovered in laboratory conditions, when subjects are asked to perform in short, time-constrained intervals, we assume that the reading rates in actual conditions, when students read for longer periods with periodic breaks, will be slightly slower.

Because there is no research on the time it takes students to engage texts, we assume that the rates would be similar to the rates found when students are asked to memorize a text for later recall. Although these are incredibly different tasks, both require attention to details alongside additional processing. If anything, we imagine equating these two rates significantly under estimates the time it takes to read for engagement (for an example of the sort of reading that is likely to take more time than it takes to memorize, see the appendix of Perry et al., 2015).

If the reading purpose remains the same, the change in reading rates across text difficulty levels is linear.

The rate of change in reading rates across text difficulty levels is the same across reading purposes.

Combining what we know with what we assume allows us to construct the following table of estimated reading rates (with rates about which we are most confident in yellow):

Writing Rates

Sadly, we know much less about student writing rates than we do about reading rates. This is no doubt because writing rates vary even more widely than reading rates. Nevertheless, we've found at least one study that can give us a place to begin. In " Individual Differences in Undergraduate Essay-Writing Strategies ," Mark Torrance and his colleagues find (among other things) that 493 students reported spending anywhere between 9 to 15 hours on 1500-word essays. In these essays, students were asked to produce a "critical description and discussion of psychological themes" using at least one outside source. Torrance and his colleagues also show that students who spent the least time reported no drafting, while those who spent the most time reported multiple drafts, along with detailed outlining and planning. And the students who spent the most time received higher marks than those who spent the least (Torrance et al., 2000).

Although the sample of this study is sizable, we should not read too much into a single result of student self-reports about a single assignment from a single institution. But to arrive at our estimates, we must. Users should simply be aware that the table below is far more speculative than our reading rate estimates. And that the time your students spend on these tasks is likely to vary from these estimates in significant ways.

As with reading rates, we assume that writing rates will be a function of a variety of factors. The three we take into account are 1) page density, 2) text genre, 3) degree of drafting and revision.

Page Density

• 250 words: Double-Spaced, Times New Roman, 12-Point Font, 1" Margins
• 500 words: Single-Spaced, Times New Roman, 12-Point Font, 1" Margins
• Reflection/Narrative: Essays that require very little planning or critical engagement with content
• Argument: Essays that require critical engagement with content and detailed planning, but no outside research
• Research: Essays that require detailed planning, outside research, and critical engagement

Drafting and Revision

• No Drafting: Students submit essays that were never revised
• Minimal Drafting: Students submit essays that were revised at least once
• Extensive Drafting: Students submit essays that were revised multiple times

What we assume to arrive at our estimates:

• The results of the Torrance study are reasonably accurate.
• The assignment in the study falls within the "argument" genre. It's hard to tell without more details, but "critical description and discussion" seems to imply more than reflection. And while an outside source was required, finding and using a single source falls well below the expectations of a traditional research paper.
• Students write at a constant rate. That is, we assume that a student writing the same sort of essay will take exactly twice as much time to write a 12 page paper as she takes to write a 6 page paper. There are good reasons to think this assumption is unrealistic, but because we have no way of knowing how much rate might shift over the course of a paper, we assume constancy.
• Students will spend less time writing a reflective or narrative essay than they spend constructing an argumentative essay (assuming the same degree of drafting and revision). For simplicity's sake, we assume they will spend exactly half the time. It's highly unlikely to be this linear, but we don't know enough to make a more accurate assumption.
• Students will spend more time writing a research paper than they spend on their argumentative essays. Again, for simplicity's sake, we assume they will spend exactly twice the amount of time. It's not only unlikely to be this linear, it's also likely to vary greatly by the amount of outside reading a student does and the difficulty of the sources he or she tackles.

These assumptions allow us to construct the following table of estimated writing rates (with rates about which we are most confident in yellow):

Bibliography

Aaronson, Doris, and Steven Ferres. “Lexical Categories and Reading Tasks.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 9, no. 5 (1983): 675–99. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.9.5.675.

Acheson, Daniel J., Justine B. Wells, and Maryellen C. MacDonald. “New and Updated Tests of Print Exposure and Reading Abilities in College Students.” Behavior Research Methods 40, no. 1 (2008): 278–89. doi:10.3758/BRM.40.1.278.

Carrillo, Lawrence W., and William D. Sheldon. “The Flexibility of Reading Rate.” Journal of Educational Psychology 43, no. 5 (1952): 299–305. doi:10.1037/h0054161.

Carver, Ronald P. “Is Reading Rate Constant or Flexible?” Reading Research Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1983): 190–215. doi:10.2307/747517.

———. “Optimal Rate of Reading Prose.” Reading Research Quarterly 18, no. 1 (1982): 56–88. doi:10.2307/747538.

———. “Reading Rate: Theory, Research, and Practical Implications.” Journal of Reading 36, no. 2 (1992): 84–95.

Dehaene, Stanislas. Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read . Reprint edition. New York: Penguin Books, 2010.

Grob, James A. “Reading Rate and Study-Time Demands on Secondary Students.” Journal of Reading 13, no. 4 (1970): 285–88.

Hausfeld, Steven. “Speeded Reading and Listening Comprehension for Easy and Difficult Materials.” Journal of Educational Psychology 73, no. 3 (1981): 312–19. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.73.3.312.

Jay, S., and Patricia R. Dahl. “Establishing Appropriate Purpose for Reading and Its Effect on Flexibility of Reading Rate.” Journal of Educational Psychology 67, no. 1 (1975): 38–43. doi:10.1037/h0078669.

Just, Marcel A., and Patricia A. Carpenter. “A Theory of Reading: From Eye Fixations to Comprehension.” Psychological Review 87, no. 4 (1980): 329–54. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.87.4.329.

Love, Jessica. “ Reading Fast and Slow .” The American Scholar , March 1, 2012.

McLaughlin, G. Harry. “Reading at ‘Impossible’ Speeds.” Journal of Reading 12, no. 6 (1969): 449–510.

Parker, Don H. “Reading Rate Is Multilevel.” The Clearing House 36, no. 8 (1962): 451–55.

Perry, John, Michael Bratman, and John Martin Fischer. “ Appendix: Reading Philosophy .” In Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings , 7 edition. New York City, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Rayner, Keith, Elizabeth R. Schotter, Michael E. J. Masson, Mary C. Potter, and Rebecca Treiman. “So Much to Read, So Little Time How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help?” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 17, no. 1 (May 1, 2016): 4–34. doi:10.1177/1529100615623267.

Robinson, F., and P. Hall. “Studies of Higher-Level Reading Abilities.” Journal of Educational Psychology 32, no. 4 (1941): 241–52. doi:10.1037/h0062111.

Siegenthaler, Eva, Pascal Wurtz, Per Bergamin, and Rudolf Groner. “Comparing Reading Processes on E-Ink Displays and Print.” Displays 32, no. 5 (December 2011): 268–73. doi:10.1016/j.displa.2011.05.005.

Torrance, Mark, Glyn V. Thomas, and Elizabeth J. Robinson. “Individual Differences in Undergraduate Essay-Writing Strategies: A Longitudinal Study.” Higher Education 39, no. 2 (2000): 181–200.

Underwood, Geoffrey, Alison Hubbard, and Howard Wilkinson. “Eye Fixations Predict Reading Comprehension: The Relationships between Reading Skill, Reading Speed, and Visual Inspection.” Language and Speech 33, no. 1 (January 1, 1990): 69–81.

Wolf, Maryanne. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain . Reprint edition. New York: Harper Perennial, 2008.

Zacks, Jeffrey M., and Rebecca Treiman. “ Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read .” The New York Times , April 15, 2016.

How Much Time Do College Students Spend on Homework

by Jack Tai | Oct 9, 2019 | Articles

Does college life involve more studying or socializing?

Find out how much time college students need to devote to their homework in order to succeed in class.

We all know that it takes hard work to succeed in college and earn top grades.

To find out more about the time demands of studying and learning, let’s review the average homework amounts of college students.

HowtoLearn.com expert, Jack Tai, CEO of OneClass.com shows how homework improves grades in college and an average of how much time is required.

How Many Hours Do College Students Spend on Homework?

Classes in college are much different from those in high school.

For students in high school, a large part of learning occurs in the classroom with homework used to support class activities.

One of the first thing that college students need to learn is how to read and remember more quickly. It gives them a competitive benefit in their grades and when they learn new information to escalate their career.

Taking a speed reading course that shows you how to learn at the same time is one of the best ways for students to complete their reading assignments and their homework.

However, in college, students spend a shorter period in class and spend more time learning outside of the classroom.

This shift to an independent learning structure means that college students should expect to spend more time on homework than they did during high school.

In college, a good rule of thumb for homework estimates that for each college credit you take, you’ll spend one hour in the classroom and two to three hours on homework each week.

These homework tasks can include readings, working on assignments, or studying for exams.

Based upon these estimates, a three-credit college class would require each week to include approximately three hours attending lectures and six to nine hours of homework.

Extrapolating this out to the 15-credit course load of a full-time student, that would be 15 hours in the classroom and 30 to 45 hours studying and doing homework.

These time estimates demonstrate that college students have significantly more homework than the 10 hours per week average among high school students. In fact, doing homework in college can take as much time as a full-time job.

Students should keep in mind that these homework amounts are averages.

Students will find that some professors assign more or less homework. Students may also find that some classes assign very little homework in the beginning of the semester, but increase later on in preparation for exams or when a major project is due. 

There can even be variation based upon the major with some areas of study requiring more lab work or reading.

Do College Students Do Homework on Weekends?

Based on the quantity of homework in college, it’s nearly certain that students will be spending some of their weekends doing homework.

For example, if each weekday, a student spends three hours in class and spends five hours on homework, there’s still at least five hours of homework to do on the weekend.

When considering how homework schedules can affect learning, it’s important to remember that even though college students face a significant amount of homework, one of the best learning strategies is to space out study sessions into short time blocks.

This includes not just doing homework every day of the week, but also establishing short study blocks in the morning, afternoon, and evening. With this approach, students can avoid cramming on Sunday night to be ready for class.

What’s the Best Way to Get Help with Your Homework?

In college, there are academic resources built into campus life to support learning.

For example, you may have access to an on-campus learning center or tutoring facilities. You may also have the support of teaching assistants or regular office hours.

That’s why OneClass recommends a course like How to Read a Book in a Day and Remember It which gives a c hoice to support your learning. 

Another choice is on demand tutoring.

They send detailed, step-by-step solutions within just 24 hours, and frequently, answers are sent in less than 12 hours.

When students have on-demand access to homework help, it’s possible to avoid the poor grades that can result from unfinished homework.

Plus, 24/7 Homework Help makes it easy to ask a question. Simply snap a photo and upload it to the platform.

That’s all tutors need to get started preparing your solution.

Rather than retyping questions or struggling with math formulas, asking questions and getting answers is as easy as click and go.

Homework Help supports coursework for both high school and college students across a wide range of subjects. Moreover, students can access OneClass’ knowledge base of previously answered homework questions.

Simply browse by subject or search the directory to find out if another student struggled to learn the same class material.

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College Homework: What You Need to Know

• April 1, 2020

Samantha "Sam" Sparks

• Future of Education

Despite what Hollywood shows us, most of college life actually involves studying, burying yourself in mountains of books, writing mountains of reports, and, of course, doing a whole lot of homework.

Wait, homework? That’s right, homework doesn’t end just because high school did: part of parcel of any college course will be homework. So if you thought college is harder than high school , then you’re right, because in between hours and hours of lectures and term papers and exams, you’re still going to have to take home a lot of schoolwork to do in the comfort of your dorm.

College life is demanding, it’s difficult, but at the end of the day, it’s fulfilling. You might have had this idealized version of what your college life is going to be like, but we’re here to tell you: it’s not all parties and cardigans.

How Many Hours Does College Homework Require?

Here’s the thing about college homework: it’s vastly different from the type of takehome school activities you might have had in high school.

See, high school students are given homework to augment what they’ve learned in the classroom. For high school students, a majority of their learning happens in school, with their teachers guiding them along the way.

In college, however, your professors will encourage you to learn on your own. Yes, you will be attending hours and hours of lectures and seminars, but most of your learning is going to take place in the library, with your professors taking a more backseat approach to your learning process. This independent learning structure teaches prospective students to hone their critical thinking skills, perfect their research abilities, and encourage them to come up with original thoughts and ideas.

Sure, your professors will still step in every now and then to help with anything you’re struggling with and to correct certain mistakes, but by and large, the learning process in college is entirely up to how you develop your skills.

This is the reason why college homework is voluminous: it’s designed to teach you how to basically learn on your own. While there is no set standard on how much time you should spend doing homework in college, a good rule-of-thumb practiced by model students is 3 hours a week per college credit . It doesn’t seem like a lot, until you factor in that the average college student takes on about 15 units per semester. With that in mind, it’s safe to assume that a single, 3-unit college class would usually require 9 hours of homework per week.

But don’t worry, college homework is also different from high school homework in how it’s structured. High school homework usually involves a take-home activity of some kind, where students answer certain questions posed to them. College homework, on the other hand, is more on reading texts that you’ll discuss in your next lecture, studying for exams, and, of course, take-home activities.

Take these averages with a grain of salt, however, as the average number of hours required to do college homework will also depend on your professor, the type of class you’re attending, what you’re majoring in, and whether or not you have other activities (like laboratory work or field work) that would compensate for homework.

Do Students Do College Homework On the Weekends?

Again, based on the average number we provided above, and again, depending on numerous other factors, it’s safe to say that, yes, you would have to complete a lot of college homework on the weekends.

Using the average given above, let’s say that a student does 9 hours of homework per week per class. A typical semester would involve 5 different classes (each with 3 units), which means that a student would be doing an average of 45 hours of homework per week. That would equal to around 6 hours of homework a day, including weekends.

That might seem overwhelming, but again: college homework is different from high school homework in that it doesn’t always involve take-home activities. In fact, most of your college homework (but again, depending on your professor, your major, and other mitigating factors) will probably involve doing readings and writing essays. Some types of college homework might not even feel like homework, as some professors encourage inter-personal learning by requiring their students to form groups and discuss certain topics instead of doing take-home activities or writing papers. Again, lab work and field work (depending on your major) might also make up for homework.

Remember: this is all relative. Some people read fast and will find that 3 hours per unit per week is much too much time considering they can finish a reading in under an hour.The faster you learn how to read, the less amount of time you’ll need to devote to homework.

College homework is difficult, but it’s also manageable. This is why you see a lot of study groups in college, where your peers will establish a way for everyone to learn on a collective basis, as this would help lighten the mental load you might face during your college life. There are also different strategies you can develop to master your time management skills, all of which will help you become a more holistic person once you leave college.

So, yes, your weekends will probably be chock-full of schoolwork, but you’ll need to learn how to manage your time in such a way that you’ll be able to do your homework and socialize, but also have time to develop your other skills and/or talk to family and friends.

College Homework Isn’t All That Bad, Though

Sure, you’ll probably have time for parties and joining a fraternity/sorority, even attend those mythical college keggers (something that the person who invented college probably didn’t have in mind). But I hate to break it to you: those are going to be few and far in between. But here’s a consolation, however: you’re going to be studying something you’re actually interested in.

All of those hours spent in the library, writing down papers, doing college homework? It’s going to feel like a minute because you’re doing something you actually love doing. And if you fear that you’ll be missing out, don’t worry: all those people that you think are attending those parties aren’t actually there because they, too, will be busy studying!

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5 ways to organize your college assignments.

BY JANE HURST

Weekly assignments, midterms, final papers… all piling up each day, making every year of your college life seem more difficult than the previous one. But it doesn’t have to be this hard.

There are several different ways to help you sort out your assignments and actually get started with completing them. Whether you prefer putting all your notes and ideas on paper or would rather reduce your carbon footprint and go all in for tech, here are 5 ways to organize your student assignments:

• Assignment binders and planners

Perhaps the most accessible method for organizing your student assignments is creating a binder to hold all your papers, reminders, and auxiliary materials. You can either create one for each class or a separate binder for your assignments only. Alternatively, you can put together an up-to-date semester agenda with assignments and their due dates so you can check it out each week to see what’s next for you to prepare and if you’re on track with college work.

These two options are strong organization tools you can reach out to at any time. Try color-coding or sorting them in a specific order of your choice to find the files you need more easily. For instance, you can divide your assignments binder into 3 parts: a red folder for assignments you have to complete, a yellow one for the ones you’re working on, and a green folder for any papers you’ve already delivered. Be careful here not to put an assignment you’re done with into the green folder until you’ve delivered it to your teacher.

• Digital Kanban boards

If you’d rather have a tool remind you when your assignments are due, try digital Kanban boards. A Kanban visual board is a practical method that lets you track all assignments and college work through 3 simple stages: To Do, In Progress, and Finished/Delivered.

You’ll receive email notifications or alerts whenever an assignment’s deadline is approaching. The best part is that these tools can also be used together with your classmates in case you’ve got group projects to work on.

Free project management software options like Paymo often offer a Kanban feature in addition to simple to-do lists that will also allow you to keep track of any other duties you have be they personal or college related.

• Consider a cloud-based file storage solution

If you’re always on the run going from one class to another, you probably won’t want to keep all your files, binders, and notes with you. Online file storage options like Dropbox or Google Drive help you store all of these in a single place.

This way, you’ll be able to access your assignments and class notes from anywhere whether you’re on your laptop, smartphone, or classroom computer. You can also become a power user of these digital solutions by learning how to organize your files into folders so you’ve got every structured according to your year of study, semester, and class.

• The classical desktop folders

For those of you who like taking their laptop to class and writing down all notes digitally, you might want to stick to organizing all files in your computer. This is an accessible and free method that will also allow you to get started with an assignment without having to download any external files.

An example for this filing system could be: Assignments -> Molecular Foundations -> Midterm Assignments -> To Do -> DNA recombination paper (file).

To make sure you don’t miss a deadline, just pair this method with a project management tool or your calendar app to send you regular reminders in time.

• The Big6 Organizer 

Now that you’ve got your files sorted, you need a strategy to get started with working on your assignments. The Big6 method is a 6-step process that helps you conduct your research through a series of clear stages. This way you’ll never be stuck again wondering what you’re supposed to do next.

The 6 stages are:

• Task definition – Define your information-related problem and find the facts and figures you need. 2. Information seeking strategies – Identify all potential information sources and establish the best ones. 3. Location and access – Locate these sources and find the info you need within them. 4. Use of information – Engage with the information you found by reading any written content, watching a video, or experimenting and extract only the information that is relevant to your research. 5. Synthesis – Organize the info you found in your multiple sources and present it in a structured manner. 6. Evaluation – Judge the effectiveness of your results and analyze if the research process was efficient and you’ve covered all of the assignment’s aspects.

Test a few of these methods for organizing your student assignments before you decide to rigorously follow one. Pay particular attention to how stress-free you feel when using one or another of these techniques. For example, if you’re feeling anxious at all times thinking you’ll forget to hand in an assignment, then perhaps it’s better for you to go for one of the digital methods that will notify you whenever a due date is approaching.

Jane Hurst has been working in education for over 5 years as a teacher. She loves sharing her knowledge with students, is fascinated about edtech and loves reading, a lot. Follow Jane on Twitter.

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How much time should I study in college?

About the author

Hi there. I am the prolific professor with 15 years of experience teaching online and in-person. I have a graduate degree. I have a passion for education. But I’ve also worked in the professional world (outside of education) too. Thanks for visiting.

Studying time in college : How much is enough?

When you’re planning your college schedule, you probably want to know how many courses to take.

And when you’re considering how many credit hours to take, you’ll probably need to know how much time you should expect to spend studying for each course.

Because if you don’t plan accordingly, you could end with too many courses and not enough study time.

You might end up making bad grades in your courses.

Or worse, you fail the course altogether.

Throughout my YEARS of experience as a college professor, I have dedicated my time to finding out what is the right amount of study time for each course.

I am going to give you that information below.

Keep in mind though that each course is different, and each student is different, so these aren’t hard rules.

They will depend on the course and the student.

But they serve as a guideline.

And I also have an amazing interactive quiz to help you figure out what type of learner you are because this could impact your study time.

Let’s get started.

What type of courses are you taking?

How much you study depends entirely on the type of courses you are taking.

Math and Science courses

When I see students who are taking science and math courses, they’ll typically say that these courses take longer to study for compared to courses like a speech class.

But if you are an amazing math and science student, these might be your easiest courses.

Other times, I find that students who are taking courses within their selected major believe that those courses are easier overall.

The reason is that these students are really interested in those courses and since most are related in some way, they already know some of the information and they don’t have to re-learn it all over again with each new course.

It’s possible that science and math courses need more study time , but courses within your major need less study time.

Of course, it’s theoretical, but something to consider.

Rigorous courses

If you take college courses from some of the most prestigious colleges, you might end up having more assignments and more challenging coursework.

This isn’t to say that other universities aren’t just as rigorous, but some professors might be more challenging than others and it would depend on your institution and your professor.

That’s a consideration.

Honors courses

If you take honors courses , that will also impact your study time.

Some colleges have honors courses that will give you the distinction of honors at graduation.

These courses will likely have a higher level of academic rigor than other courses.

Online courses

And lastly, if you take classes online , your study time may be impacted too.

For courses that I used to teach, my online classes would require more study time because students were learning more independently.

Instead of spending time in class, students would be studying on their own time instead.

So, for online classes, you might set aside more study time because you don’t have to go to class. This time might be spent studying instead.

What type of learner are you?

Something that will impact your studying time is the type of learner you are.

Let me explain.

Because if you find that your professor uses a different type of teaching style than you prefer, it might make your study time increase.

If your professor teaches the way you learn best, then your study time might be reduced.

It’s pretty well known in the educational field that there are four main types of learners. Neil Fleming’s VARK explanation is very popular.

Visual – If you’re this type of learner, you probably like to see information rather than hear it. You might prefer charts, diagrams, or videos to see the information displayed to make sense of it all.

Auditory – This type of student would prefer to hear the information during a lecture or discussion rather than reading it or seeing it.

Reading/Writing – And this type of student prefers to read the information and they might do better at taking and reviewing notes.

Kinesthetic – This type of learner wants to be more hands-on and might learn better from participating in activities like experiments to see it in action.

PRO TIP : If you are an auditory learner, you might consider purchasing an audio recorder to record your professor’s lecture (with their permission) and re-play it later to study!

How much time you study could depend on the type of learner you most identify with.

How much study time should you have for each course?

Okay, let’s talk numbers now.

When we are considering study time, you need to first understand that there are many factors that will affect your results.

And it will also depend on how we define study time.

I am not considering the time you are spending in class because you aren’t necessarily studying.

So, keep in mind that students who are taking online classes might have more preparation than students who are going to in-person classes.

Here is my best estimate from what I have seen.

I recommend students spend around 6 hours studying for a three-hour course, per week (give or take a little).

Remember, this does not include class time.

And if you are taking online classes, you should expect to spend additional time doing assignments and reviewing material, in addition to studying time.

This only includes time you will spend studying, and may not include the time it takes to work on research assignments, homework, etc.

How much time do college students really study?

See my table below to find out the estimated study time PER WEEK based on your enrolled credit hours.

For undergraduate courses, it is expected that students will spend 2 hours studying per week for each credit hour enrolled.

Graduate students will spend 3 hours studying per week for each credit hour enrolled.

I also included graduate courses too because students in graduate classes can usually expect to spend more time studying than those in undergraduate courses. But this might not always be true. It is just what I personally experienced myself.

I did not include anything above 18 credit hours for an undergraduate course because taking more than 18 hours typically requires college approval in the United States and it is not a likely course load for most students.

For graduate students, I only included 12 credit hours or less because most graduate students won’t take more than 4 graduate courses at a time. While not impossible, just not as likely.

Graduate courses are usually more demanding so most students take fewer courses.

I spent much more time on my graduate level courses than I did on my undergraduate studies.

As you can see from the table above, if you are taking 12 credit hours for an undergraduate course, you can expect to spend 24 hours studying each week, on average.

This can quickly add up with time spent in the classroom, and if you are working, you can see that going to college can quickly become a full-time job for dedicated students.

Make sure to plan your schedule based upon your spare time for studying because you don’t want to end up with bad grades because you’re too busy to study for your college courses.

Things to consider

If you are taking a class during a short semester, like a winter semester or summer semester class, you will spend considerably more time than what is mentioned above.

This is the recommended study time for a long semester, about 16 weeks long, and does not include time for an accelerated course.

So, plan accordingly for those faster paced courses.

If you are just aiming to make a ‘C’ in a class, then these rules might not apply.

Or you might be a student who never has to study and can do exceptionally well, then these rules may not apply.

Sometimes I notice students struggling more than others, and they need additional support. So, you might need more study time than I am suggesting.

Often times, older college students might have more responsibilities and distractions and might need to plan and strategize their study time.

I have spent years teaching college students, and this is based on my observations.

If you want to get the most out of your college career, I recommend spending as much time as possible studying to earn good grades.

Remember, you got this.

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2.3 Organizing Your Time

Learning objectives.

• Discover your time personality and know where your time goes.
• Understand the basic principles of time management and planning.
• Learn and practice time management strategies to help ensure your academic success.
• Know how to combat procrastination when it threatens to prevent getting your academic work done.
• Use a calendar planner and daily to-do list to plan ahead for study tasks and manage your time effectively.
• Learn effective time management techniques for students who work, students with family, and student athletes.

This is the most important part of this chapter. When you know what you want to do, why not just sit down and get it done? The millions of people who complain frequently about “not having enough time” would love it if it were that simple!

Time management isn’t actually difficult, but you do need to learn how to do it well.

Time and Your Personality

People’s attitudes toward time vary widely. One person seems to be always rushing around but actually gets less done than another person who seems unconcerned about time and calmly goes about the day. Since there are so many different “time personalities,” it’s important to realize how you approach time. Start by trying to figure out how you spend your time during a typical week, using Activity 2.

Activity 2: Where Does the Time Go?

See if you can account for a week’s worth of time. For each of the activity categories listed, make your best estimate of how many hours you spend in a week. (For categories that are about the same every day, just estimate for one day and multiply by seven for that line.)

Now use your calculator to total your estimated hours. Is your number larger or smaller than 168, the total number of hours in a week? If your estimate is higher, go back through your list and adjust numbers to be more realistic. But if your estimated hours total fewer than 168, don’t just go back and add more time in certain categories. Instead, ponder this question: Where does the time go? We’ll come back to this question.

Think about your time analysis in Activity 2. People who estimate too high often feel they don’t have enough time. They may have time anxiety and often feel frustrated. People at the other extreme, who often can’t account for how they use all their time, may have a more relaxed attitude. They may not actually have any more free time, but they may be wasting more time than they want to admit with less important things. Yet they still may complain about how much time they spend studying, as if there’s a shortage of time.

People also differ in how they respond to schedule changes. Some go with the flow and accept changes easily, while others function well only when following a planned schedule and may become upset if that schedule changes. If you do not react well to an unexpected disruption in your schedule, plan extra time for catching up if something throws you off. This is all part of understanding your time personality.

Another aspect of your time personality involves time of day. If you need to concentrate, such as when writing a class paper, are you more alert and focused in the morning, afternoon, or evening? Do you concentrate best when you look forward to a relaxing activity later on, or do you study better when you’ve finished all other activities? Do you function well if you get up early—or stay up late—to accomplish a task? How does that affect the rest of your day or the next day? Understanding this will help you better plan your study periods.

While you may not be able to change your “time personality,” you can learn to manage your time more successfully. The key is to be realistic. How accurate is the number of hours you wrote down in Activity 2? The best way to know how you spend your time is to record what you do all day in a time log, every day for a week, and then add that up. Make copies of the time log in Figure 2.4 “Daily Time Log” and carry it with you. Every so often, fill in what you have been doing. Do this for a week before adding up the times; then enter the total hours in the categories in Activity 2. You might be surprised that you spend a lot more time than you thought just hanging out with friends—or surfing the Web or playing around with Facebook or any of the many other things people do. You might find that you study well early in the morning even though you thought you are a night person, or vice versa. You might learn how long you can continue at a specific task before needing a break.

Figure 2.4 Daily Time Log

If you have work and family responsibilities, you may already know where many of your hours go. Although we all wish we had “more time,” the important thing is what we do with the time we have. Time management strategies can help us better use the time we do have by creating a schedule that works for our own time personality.

Time Management

Time management for successful college studying involves these factors:

• Determining how much time you need to spend studying
• Knowing how much time you actually have for studying and increasing that time if needed
• Being aware of the times of day you are at your best and most focused
• Using effective long- and short-term study strategies
• Scheduling study activities in realistic segments
• Using a system to plan ahead and set priorities
• Staying motivated to follow your plan and avoid procrastination

For every hour in the classroom, college students should spend, on average, about two hours on that class, counting reading, studying, writing papers, and so on. If you’re a full-time student with fifteen hours a week in class, then you need another thirty hours for rest of your academic work. That forty-five hours is about the same as a typical full-time job. If you work part time, time management skills are even more essential. These skills are still more important for part-time college students who work full time and commute or have a family. To succeed in college, virtually everyone has to develop effective strategies for dealing with time.

Look back at the number of hours you wrote in Activity 2 for a week of studying. Do you have two hours of study time for every hour in class? Many students begin college not knowing this much time is needed, so don’t be surprised if you underestimated this number of hours. Remember this is just an average amount of study time—you may need more or less for your own courses. To be safe, and to help ensure your success, add another five to ten hours a week for studying.

To reserve this study time, you may need to adjust how much time you spend in other activities. Activity 3 will help you figure out what your typical week should look like.

Activity 3: Where Should Your Time Go?

Plan for the ideal use of a week’s worth of time. Fill in your hours in this order:

• Hours attending class
• Study hours (2 times the number of class hours plus 5 or more hours extra)
• Work, internships, and fixed volunteer time

Fixed life activities (sleeping, eating, hygiene, chores, transportation, etc.)

Now subtotal your hours so far and subtract that number from 168. How many hours are left? ____________ Then portion out the remaining hours for “discretionary activities” (things you don’t have to do for school, work, or a healthy life).

• Discretionary activities

Note: If you find you have almost no time left for discretionary activities, you may be overestimating how much time you need for eating, errands, and the like. Use the time log in Figure 2.4 “Daily Time Log” to determine if you really have to spend that much time on those things.

Activity 3 shows most college students that they do actually have plenty of time for their studies without losing sleep or giving up their social life. But you may have less time for discretionary activities than in the past. Something, somewhere has to give. That’s part of time management—and why it’s important to keep your goals and priorities in mind. The other part is to learn how to use the hours you do have as effectively as possible, especially the study hours. For example, if you’re a typical college freshman who plans to study for three hours in an evening but then procrastinates , gets caught up in a conversation, loses time to checking e-mail and text messages, and listens to loud music while reading a textbook, then maybe you actually spent four hours “studying” but got only two hours of actual work done. So you end up behind and feeling like you’re still studying way too much. The goal of time management is to actually get three hours of studying done in three hours and have time for your life as well.

Special note for students who work. You may have almost no discretionary time at all left in Activity 3 after all your “must-do” activities. If so, you may have overextended yourself—a situation that inevitably will lead to problems. You can’t sleep two hours less every night for the whole school year, for example, without becoming ill or unable to concentrate well on work and school. It is better to recognize this situation now rather than set yourself up for a very difficult term and possible failure. If you cannot cut the number of hours for work or other obligations, see your academic advisor right away. It is better to take fewer classes and succeed than to take more classes than you have time for and risk failure.

Time Management Strategies for Success

Following are some strategies you can begin using immediately to make the most of your time:

• Prepare to be successful. When planning ahead for studying, think yourself into the right mood. Focus on the positive. “When I get these chapters read tonight, I’ll be ahead in studying for the next test, and I’ll also have plenty of time tomorrow to do X.” Visualize yourself studying well!
• Use your best—and most appropriate—time of day. Different tasks require different mental skills. Some kinds of studying you may be able to start first thing in the morning as you wake, while others need your most alert moments at another time.
• Break up large projects into small pieces. Whether it’s writing a paper for class, studying for a final exam, or reading a long assignment or full book, students often feel daunted at the beginning of a large project. It’s easier to get going if you break it up into stages that you schedule at separate times—and then begin with the first section that requires only an hour or two.
• Do the most important studying first. When two or more things require your attention, do the more crucial one first. If something happens and you can’t complete everything, you’ll suffer less if the most crucial work is done.
• If you have trouble getting started, do an easier task first. Like large tasks, complex or difficult ones can be daunting. If you can’t get going, switch to an easier task you can accomplish quickly. That will give you momentum, and often you feel more confident tackling the difficult task after being successful in the first one.
• If you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed because you have too much to do, revisit your time planner. Sometimes it’s hard to get started if you keep thinking about other things you need to get done. Review your schedule for the next few days and make sure everything important is scheduled, then relax and concentrate on the task at hand.
• If you’re really floundering, talk to someone. Maybe you just don’t understand what you should be doing. Talk with your instructor or another student in the class to get back on track.
• Take a break. We all need breaks to help us concentrate without becoming fatigued and burned out. As a general rule, a short break every hour or so is effective in helping recharge your study energy. Get up and move around to get your blood flowing, clear your thoughts, and work off stress.
• Use unscheduled times to work ahead. You’ve scheduled that hundred pages of reading for later today, but you have the textbook with you as you’re waiting for the bus. Start reading now, or flip through the chapter to get a sense of what you’ll be reading later. Either way, you’ll save time later. You may be amazed how much studying you can get done during downtimes throughout the day.
• Keep your momentum. Prevent distractions, such as multitasking, that will only slow you down. Check for messages, for example, only at scheduled break times.
• Reward yourself. It’s not easy to sit still for hours of studying. When you successfully complete the task, you should feel good and deserve a small reward. A healthy snack, a quick video game session, or social activity can help you feel even better about your successful use of time.
• Just say no. Always tell others nearby when you’re studying, to reduce the chances of being interrupted. Still, interruptions happen, and if you are in a situation where you are frequently interrupted by a family member, spouse, roommate, or friend, it helps to have your “no” prepared in advance: “No, I really have to be ready for this test” or “That’s a great idea, but let’s do it tomorrow—I just can’t today.” You shouldn’t feel bad about saying no—especially if you told that person in advance that you needed to study.
• Have a life. Never schedule your day or week so full of work and study that you have no time at all for yourself, your family and friends, and your larger life.
• Use a calendar planner and daily to-do list. We’ll look at these time management tools in the next section.

Battling Procrastination

Procrastination is a way of thinking that lets one put off doing something that should be done now. This can happen to anyone at any time. It’s like a voice inside your head keeps coming up with these brilliant ideas for things to do right now other than studying: “I really ought to get this room cleaned up before I study” or “I can study anytime, but tonight’s the only chance I have to do X.” That voice is also very good at rationalizing: “I really don’t need to read that chapter now; I’ll have plenty of time tomorrow at lunch.…”

Procrastination is very powerful. Some people battle it daily, others only occasionally. Most college students procrastinate often, and about half say they need help avoiding procrastination. Procrastination can threaten one’s ability to do well on an assignment or test.

People procrastinate for different reasons. Some people are too relaxed in their priorities, seldom worry, and easily put off responsibilities. Others worry constantly, and that stress keeps them from focusing on the task at hand. Some procrastinate because they fear failure; others procrastinate because they fear success or are so perfectionistic that they don’t want to let themselves down. Some are dreamers. Many different factors are involved, and there are different styles of procrastinating.

Just as there are different causes, there are different possible solutions for procrastination. Different strategies work for different people. The time management strategies described earlier can help you avoid procrastination. Because this is a psychological issue, some additional psychological strategies can also help:

• Since procrastination is usually a habit, accept that and work on breaking it as you would any other bad habit: one day at a time. Know that every time you overcome feelings of procrastination, the habit becomes weaker—and eventually you’ll have a new habit of being able to start studying right away.
• Schedule times for studying using a daily or weekly planner. Carry it with you and look at it often. Just being aware of the time and what you need to do today can help you get organized and stay on track.
• If you keep thinking of something else you might forget to do later (making you feel like you “must” do it now), write yourself a note about it for later and get it out of your mind.
• Counter a negative with a positive. If you’re procrastinating because you’re not looking forward to a certain task, try to think of the positive future results of doing the work.
• Counter a negative with a worse negative. If thinking about the positive results of completing the task doesn’t motivate you to get started, think about what could happen if you keep procrastinating. You’ll have to study tomorrow instead of doing something fun you had planned. Or you could fail the test. Some people can jolt themselves right out of procrastination.
• On the other hand, fear causes procrastination in some people—so don’t dwell on the thought of failing. If you’re studying for a test, and you’re so afraid of failing it that you can’t focus on studying and you start procrastinating, try to put things in perspective. Even if it’s your most difficult class and you don’t understand everything about the topic, that doesn’t mean you’ll fail, even if you may not receive an A or a B.
• Study with a motivated friend. Form a study group with other students who are motivated and won’t procrastinate along with you. You’ll learn good habits from them while getting the work done now.
• Keep a study journal. At least once a day write an entry about how you have used your time and whether you succeeded with your schedule for the day. If not, identify what factors kept you from doing your work. (Use the form at the end of this chapter.) This journal will help you see your own habits and distractions so that you can avoid things that lead to procrastination.
• Get help. If you really can’t stay on track with your study schedule, or if you’re always putting things off until the last minute, see a college counselor. They have lots of experience with this common student problem and can help you find ways to overcome this habit.

Calendar Planners and To-Do Lists

Calendar planners and to-do lists are effective ways to organize your time. Many types of academic planners are commercially available (check your college bookstore), or you can make your own. Some people like a page for each day, and some like a week at a time. Some use computer calendars and planners. Almost any system will work well if you use it consistently.

Some college students think they don’t need to actually write down their schedule and daily to-do lists. They’ve always kept it in their head before, so why write it down in a planner now? Some first-year students were talking about this one day in a study group, and one bragged that she had never had to write down her calendar because she never forgot dates. Another student reminded her how she’d forgotten a preregistration date and missed taking a course she really wanted because the class was full by the time she went online to register. “Well,” she said, “except for that time, I never forget anything!” Of course, none of us ever forgets anything—until we do.

Calendars and planners help you look ahead and write in important dates and deadlines so you don’t forget. But it’s just as important to use the planner to schedule your own time, not just deadlines. For example, you’ll learn later that the most effective way to study for an exam is to study in several short periods over several days. You can easily do this by choosing time slots in your weekly planner over several days that you will commit to studying for this test. You don’t need to fill every time slot, or to schedule every single thing that you do, but the more carefully and consistently you use your planner, the more successfully will you manage your time.

But a planner cannot contain every single thing that may occur in a day. We’d go crazy if we tried to schedule every telephone call, every e-mail, every bill to pay, every trip to the grocery store. For these items, we use a to-do list, which may be kept on a separate page in the planner.

Check the example of a weekly planner form in Figure 2.5 “Weekly Planner” . (You can copy this page and use it to begin your schedule planning. By using this first, you will find out whether these time slots are big enough for you or whether you’d prefer a separate planner page for each day.) Fill in this planner form for next week. First write in all your class meeting times; your work or volunteer schedule; and your usual hours for sleep, family activities, and any other activities at fixed times. Don’t forget time needed for transportation, meals, and so on. Your first goal is to find all the blocks of “free time” that are left over.

Remember that this is an academic planner . Don’t try to schedule in everything in your life—this is to plan ahead to use your study time most effectively.

Next, check the syllabus for each of your courses and write important dates in the planner. If your planner has pages for the whole term, write in all exams and deadlines. Use red ink or a highlighter for these key dates. Write them in the hour slot for the class when the test occurs or when the paper is due, for example. (If you don’t yet have a planner large enough for the whole term, use Figure 2.5 “Weekly Planner” and write any deadlines for your second week in the margin to the right. You need to know what’s coming next week to help schedule how you’re studying this week.)

Figure 2.5 Weekly Planner

Remember that for every hour spent in class, plan an average of two hours studying outside of class. These are the time periods you now want to schedule in your planner. These times change from week to week, with one course requiring more time in one week because of a paper due at the end of the week and a different course requiring more the next week because of a major exam. Make sure you block out enough hours in the week to accomplish what you need to do. As you choose your study times, consider what times of day you are at your best and what times you prefer to use for social or other activities.

Don’t try to micromanage your schedule. Don’t try to estimate exactly how many minutes you’ll need two weeks from today to read a given chapter in a given textbook. Instead, just choose the blocks of time you will use for your studies. Don’t yet write in the exact study activity—just reserve the block. Next, look at the major deadlines for projects and exams that you wrote in earlier. Estimate how much time you may need for each and work backward on the schedule from the due date. For example,

You have a short paper due on Friday. You determine that you’ll spend ten hours total on it, from initial brainstorming and planning through to drafting and revising. Since you have other things also going on that week, you want to get an early start; you might choose to block an hour a week ahead on Saturday morning, to brainstorm your topic, and jot some preliminary notes. Monday evening is a good time to spend two hours on the next step or prewriting activities. Since you have a lot of time open Tuesday afternoon, you decide that’s the best time to reserve to write the first draft; you block out three or four hours. You make a note on the schedule to leave time open that afternoon to see your instructor during office hours in case you have any questions on the paper; if not, you’ll finish the draft or start revising. Thursday, you schedule a last block of time to revise and polish the final draft due tomorrow.

If you’re surprised by this amount of planning, you may be the kind of student who used to think, “The paper’s due Friday—I have enough time Thursday afternoon, so I’ll write it then.” What’s wrong with that? First, college work is more demanding than many first-year students realize, and the instructor expects higher-quality work than you can churn out quickly without revising. Second, if you are tired on Thursday because you didn’t sleep well Wednesday night, you may be much less productive than you hoped—and without a time buffer, you’re forced to turn in a paper that is not your best work.

Figure 2.6 “Example of a Student’s Weekly Planner Page with Class Times and Important Study Sessions” shows what one student’s schedule looks like for a week. This is intended only to show you one way to block out time—you’ll quickly find a way that works best for you.

Figure 2.6 Example of a Student’s Weekly Planner Page with Class Times and Important Study Sessions

Here are some more tips for successful schedule planning:

• Studying is often most effective immediately after a class meeting. If your schedule allows, block out appropriate study time after class periods.
• Be realistic about time when you make your schedule. If your class runs to four o’clock and it takes you twenty minutes to wrap things up and reach your study location, don’t figure you’ll have a full hour of study between four o’clock and five o’clock.
• Don’t overdo it. Few people can study four or five hours nonstop, and scheduling extended time periods like that may just set you up for failure.
• Schedule social events that occur at set times, but just leave holes in the schedule for other activities. Enjoy those open times and recharge your energies!
• Try to schedule some time for exercise at least three days a week.
• Plan to use your time between classes wisely. If three days a week you have the same hour free between two classes, what should you do with those three hours? Maybe you need to eat, walk across campus, or run an errand. But say you have an average forty minutes free at that time on each day. Instead of just frittering the time away, use it to review your notes from the previous class or for the coming class or to read a short assignment. Over the whole term, that forty minutes three times a week adds up to a lot of study time.
• If a study activity is taking longer than you had scheduled, look ahead and adjust your weekly planner to prevent the stress of feeling behind.
• If you maintain your schedule on your computer or smartphone, it’s still a good idea to print and carry it with you. Don’t risk losing valuable study time if you’re away from the device.
• If you’re not paying close attention to everything in your planner, use a colored highlighter to mark the times blocked out for really important things.
• When following your schedule, pay attention to starting and stopping times. If you planned to start your test review at four o’clock after an hour of reading for a different class, don’t let the reading run long and take time away from studying for the test.

Your Daily To-Do List

People use to-do lists in different ways, and you should find what works best for you. As with your planner, consistent use of your to-do list will make it an effective habit.

Some people prefer not to carry their planner everywhere but instead copy the key information for the day onto a to-do list. Using this approach, your daily to-do list starts out with your key scheduled activities and then adds other things you hope to do today.

Some people use their to-do list only for things not on their planner, such as short errands, phone calls or e-mail, and the like. This still includes important things—but they’re not scheduled out for specific times.

Although we call it a daily list, the to-do list can also include things you may not get to today but don’t want to forget about. Keeping these things on the list, even if they’re a low priority, helps ensure that eventually you’ll get to it.

Start every day with a fresh to-do list written in a special small notebook or on a clean page in your planner. Check your planner for key activities for the day and check yesterday’s list for items remaining.

Some items won’t require much time, but other activities such as assignments will. Include a time estimate for these so that later you can do them when you have enough free time. If you finish lunch and have twenty-five minutes left before your next class, what things on the list can you do now and check off?

Finally, use some system to prioritize things on your list. Some students use a 1, 2, 3 or A, B, C rating system for importance. Others simply highlight or circle items that are critical to get done today. Figure 2.7 “Examples of Two Different Students’ To-Do Lists” shows two different to-do lists—each very different but each effective for the student using it.

Figure 2.7 Examples of Two Different Students’ To-Do Lists

Use whatever format works best for you to prioritize or highlight the most important activities.

Here are some more tips for effectively using your daily to-do list:

• Be specific: “Read history chapter 2 (30 pages)”—not “History homework.”
• Put important things high on your list where you’ll see them every time you check the list.
• Make your list at the same time every day so that it becomes a habit.
• Don’t make your list overwhelming. If you added everything you eventually need to do, you could end up with so many things on the list that you’d never read through them all. If you worry you might forget something, write it in the margin of your planner’s page a week or two away.
• Use your list. Lists often include little things that may take only a few minutes to do, so check your list any time during the day you have a moment free.
• Cross out or check off things after you’ve done them—doing this becomes rewarding.
• Don’t use your to-do list to procrastinate. Don’t pull it out to find something else you just “have” to do instead of studying!

Time Management Tips for Students Who Work

If you’re both working and taking classes, you seldom have large blocks of free time. Avoid temptations to stay up very late studying, for losing sleep can lead to a downward spiral in performance at both work and school. Instead, try to follow these guidelines:

• If possible, adjust your work or sleep hours so that you don’t spend your most productive times at work. If your job offers flex time, arrange your schedule to be free to study at times when you perform best.
• Try to arrange your class and work schedules to minimize commuting time. If you are a part-time student taking two classes, taking classes back-to-back two or three days a week uses less time than spreading them out over four or five days. Working four ten-hour days rather than five eight-hour days reduces time lost to travel, getting ready for work, and so on.
• If you can’t arrange an effective schedule for classes and work, consider online courses that allow you to do most of the work on your own time.
• Use your daily and weekly planner conscientiously. Any time you have thirty minutes or more free, schedule a study activity.
• Consider your “body clock” when you schedule activities. Plan easier tasks for those times when you’re often fatigued and reserve alert times for more demanding tasks.
• Look for any “hidden” time potentials. Maybe you prefer the thirty-minute drive to work over a forty-five-minute train ride. But if you can read on the train, that’s a gain of ninety minutes every day at the cost of thirty minutes longer travel time. An hour a day can make a huge difference in your studies.
• Can you do quick study tasks during slow times at work? Take your class notes with you and use even five minutes of free time wisely.
• Remember your long-term goals. You need to work, but you also want to finish your college program. If you have the opportunity to volunteer for some overtime, consider whether it’s really worth it. Sure, the extra money would help, but could the extra time put you at risk for not doing well in your classes?
• Be as organized on the job as you are academically. Use your planner and to-do list for work matters, too. The better organized you are at work, the less stress you’ll feel—and the more successful you’ll be as a student also.
• If you have a family as well as a job, your time is even more limited. In addition to the previous tips, try some of the strategies that follow.

Time Management Tips for Students with Family

Living with family members often introduces additional time stresses. You may have family obligations that require careful time management. Use all the strategies described earlier, including family time in your daily plans the same as you would hours spent at work. Don’t assume that you’ll be “free” every hour you’re home, because family events or a family member’s need for your assistance may occur at unexpected times. Schedule your important academic work well ahead and in blocks of time you control. See also the earlier suggestions for controlling your space: you may need to use the library or another space to ensure you are not interrupted or distracted during important study times.

Students with their own families are likely to feel time pressures. After all, you can’t just tell your partner or kids that you’ll see them in a couple years when you’re not so busy with job and college! In addition to all the planning and study strategies discussed so far, you also need to manage your family relationships and time spent with family. While there’s no magical solution for making more hours in the day, even with this added time pressure there are ways to balance your life well:

• Talk everything over with your family. If you’re going back to school, your family members may not have realized changes will occur. Don’t let them be shocked by sudden household changes. Keep communication lines open so that your partner and children feel they’re together with you in this new adventure. Eventually you will need their support.
• Work to enjoy your time together, whatever you’re doing. You may not have as much time together as previously, but cherish the time you do have—even if it’s washing dishes together or cleaning house. If you’ve been studying for two hours and need a break, spend the next ten minutes with family instead of checking e-mail or watching television. Ultimately, the important thing is being together , not going out to movies or dinners or the special things you used to do when you had more time. Look forward to being with family and appreciate every moment you are together, and they will share your attitude.

Make the most of your time with family, since you’ll also need time alone for studying.

Lee Ruk – 2015 July 01,Family visit – CC BY-SA 2.0.

• Combine activities to get the most out of time. Don’t let your children watch television or play video games off by themselves while you’re cooking dinner, or you may find you have only twenty minutes family time together while eating. Instead, bring the family together in the kitchen and give everyone something to do. You can have a lot of fun together and share the day’s experiences, and you won’t feel so bad then if you have to go off and study by yourself.
• Share the load. Even children who are very young can help with household chores to give you more time. Attitude is everything: try to make it fun, the whole family pulling together—not something they “have” to do and may resent, just because Mom or Dad went back to school. (Remember, your kids will reach college age someday, and you want them to have a good attitude about college.) As they get older, they can do their own laundry, cook meals, and get themselves off to school, and older teens can run errands and do the grocery shopping. They will gain in the process by becoming more responsible and independent.
• Schedule your study time based on family activities. If you face interruptions from young children in the early evening, use that time for something simple like reviewing class notes. When you need more quiet time for concentrated reading, wait until they’ve gone to bed.
• Be creative with child care. Usually options are available, possibly involving extended family members, sitters, older siblings, cooperative child care with other adult students, as well as child-care centers. After a certain age, you can take your child along to campus when you attend an evening course, if there is somewhere the child can quietly read. At home, let your child have a friend over to play with. Network with other older students and learn what has worked for them. Explore all possibilities to ensure you have time to meet your college goals. And don’t feel guilty: “day care babies” grow up just as healthy psychologically as those raised in the home full time.

Time Management Tips for Student Athletes

Student athletes often face unique time pressures because of the amount of time required for training, practice, and competition. During some parts of the year, athletics may involve as many hours as a full-time job. The athletic schedule can be grueling, involving weekend travel and intensive blocks of time. You can be exhausted after workouts or competitions, affecting how well you can concentrate on studies thereafter. Students on athletic scholarships often feel their sport is their most important reason for being in college, and this priority can affect their attitudes toward studying. For all of these reasons, student athletes face special time management challenges. Here are some tips for succeeding in both your sport and academics:

• Realize that even if your sport is more important to you, you risk everything if you don’t also succeed in your academics. Failing one class in your first year won’t get you kicked out, but you’ll have to make up that class—and you’ll end up spending more time on the subject than if you’d studied more to pass it the first time.
• It’s critical to plan ahead. If you have a big test or a paper due the Monday after a big weekend game, start early. Use your weekly planner to plan well in advance, making it a goal, for example, to have the paper done by Friday—instead of thinking you can magically get it done Sunday night after victory celebrations. Working ahead will also free your mind to focus better on your sport.
• Accept that you have two priorities—your sport and your classes—and that both come before your social life. That’s just how it is—what you have accepted in your choice to be a college athlete. If it helps, think of your classes as your job; you have to “go to study” the same as others “go to work.”
• Use your planner to take advantage of any downtime you have during the day between classes and at lunch. Other students may seem to have the luxury of studying during much of the afternoon when you’re at practice, and maybe they can get away with hanging out between classes, but you don’t have that time available, at least not during the season. You need to use all the time you can find to keep up with your studying.
• Stay on top of your courses. If you allow yourself to start slipping behind, maybe telling yourself you’ll have more time later on to catch up, just the opposite will happen. Once you get behind, you’ll lose momentum and find it more difficult to understand what’s going on the class. Eventually the stress will affect your athletic performance also.
• Get help when you need it. Many athletic departments offer tutoring services or referrals for extra help. But don’t wait until you’re at risk for failing a class before seeking help. A tutor won’t take your test or write your paper for you—they can only help you focus in to use your time productively in your studies. You still have to want to succeed.

Key Takeaways

• People “use” time very differently. To develop strategies for managing your time, discover your time personality and observe how much time you spend in different activities in the course of a week.
• Plan your schedule with two hours of study time for each hour in class. Use your most alert times of day, break up large tasks into smaller pieces and stages, take breaks to help you stay focused, avoid distractions, and reward yourself for successful accomplishments.
• Procrastination has many different causes for different people but is a problem for most students. Different techniques can help you battle procrastination so you can get the job done.
• Use a weekly calendar planner to block out study times and plan well ahead for examinations and key assignments to achieve success in school.
• Use a daily to-do list along with your weekly planner to avoid overlooking even smaller tasks and to make the most of your time throughout the day.
• Students who work, live with family, or are athletes often face significant time pressures and must make a special effort to stay organized and plan ahead for efficient studying.

Checkpoint Exercises

What time(s) of day are you at your most alert?

_________________________

What time(s) of day are you at your least alert?

What category of discretionary activity (not sleeping, working, studying, etc.) represents your largest use of time?

Can you reduce the time you spend in that activity if you need more time for your coursework?

For each of the following statements about time management, circle T for true or F for false:

• Without looking at your planner, to-do list, or anything else in writing, quickly write a list of everything you need to do in the next few days. Then look through your planner, to-do list, and any other class notes for anything you missed. What might you have forgotten or delayed if you weren’t keeping a planner and to-do list?

Without looking at your weekly or daily schedule, think about your typical week and the times you have free when not in class, working, studying, eating, socializing, and so on. List at least three “downtimes” when you don’t usually study that you can use for coursework when necessary.

_________________________________________

College Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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"homework" in college.

Since coming to Harvard, I don’t recall even once hearing the word “homework”—which is a pretty strange thing considering the role it played for the first 12 years of my education (spoiler alert: this doesn’t mean that we don’t have assignments and work to do).

However, the type of work that’s assigned in college is different from what I was used to in high school, so I’m here to break it down for you.

Problem Sets

Problem sets, or “psets”, are typically packets of questions that are assigned and due on a regular basis. Most of my pset classes have been math and science courses, although they don’t necessarily have to be. I think the biggest difference between psets in college compared to similar assignments in high school is that they can be really challenging, and many courses expect and encourage students to work together on them—I made some of my best friends while struggling through organic chemistry psets lasts year!

Sometimes you even get stickers.

Rather than lots of shorter assignments, many classes opt for a few essays spaced throughout the semester. Humanities classes (English, history, etc.) are typically essay classes, although many science classes also have you practice scientific writing through grant proposal or review-style papers. If you’re not super comfortable writing academic papers coming into college, not to worry! All freshmen take a writing course (Expos) during the first year to make sure that everyone is on the same foot. There’s a ton of individual feedback, so it can be really beneficial no matter what your level of writing is coming in.

Discussion Posts

Particularly if it’s an essay class, you might be assigned additional questions to respond to on an online forum for the course. It’s a nice way to keep people on track with the reading, and the responses are often used to start discussion in section.

*Most larger courses have weekly “sections” with 12-15 students and a teaching fellow leading discussion—it’s an opportunity to review the material and go more in-depth with the readings.

Reading (sometimes a lot of reading)

One of the bigger adjustments for some students is learning how to get through hundreds of pages of reading per week. Granted, this depends on what type of classes you’re taking—it is possible to tailor your schedule to an amount of reading that’s appropriate for you. I’ve found that my humanities classes have a much higher volume of reading, but that my science courses have denser reading—sometimes a seven page primary lit paper from a science journal takes me the same amount of time to read as forty pages in a novel. If you are struggling to get through all of your assigned reading, or just want to use your time more efficiently, the Bureau of Study Counsel offers “speed reading” courses during the year which are said to be really helpful!

I was found very diligently reading my book.

I have to say, I’ve had some pretty cool project assignments in college. In my multivariable calc class, our final project was to use Mathematica (a math tool) to come up with equations that would form a 3D object, so I made and printed a 3D minion. In a genetics class, we spent the semester analyzing our own DNA in lab, looking for markers that might indicate lactose intolerance, ancestral history, etc. (I wasn’t lactose intolerant, thankfully.) One of my friends is in a Folklore and Mythology class on quilt making, and her final project is to make a quilt. Pretty cool, huh?

My minion!!

Ah yes, not one to forget. On the plus side, there tend to be fewer exams in college than in high school—for classes that do have exams, you would likely only have 1-2 midterms and a final. Studying is often more effective in a group, so it’s another chance to meet people in your class!

Whew! While this is not a complete list, hopefully it gives a sense of the type of work you might be asked to do here. You can choose a schedule of classes that’s a good fit for you—while some people really like taking four essay classes or four pset classes at once, for example, I always try to strike a balance halfway in between. Particularly if you’re taking classes that you’re really interested in, the work doesn’t even seem so bad. :)

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How to Ace Your College Assignments

College can be tough. You’re juggling classes, homework, a social life, and maybe a job on the side. It’s no wonder that sometimes your college assignments don’t get the attention they deserve. But did you know that there are tricks to acing your college assignments? Here are some tips and strategies that will help you get better grades in school!

For many students, college is a big learning curve. It’s a time in your life that involves a lot of change and getting used to many new things. When it comes to college assignments, many students find that things work differently from when they were in high school. The format and types of assessments are different, the criteria for passing can feel unfamiliar, and of course, the level of learning is a step up from high school too.

But getting good grades has a direct impact on your success at college, so it’s important to do as well as you can. So what can you do to get to grips with college assignments so you ace them? Here are some tips.

Read The Instructions

Start by reading the assignment instructions carefully. This may seem obvious, but it’s important to make sure you understand what the task is and what your lecturer or professor is looking for. If you’re unsure about anything, ask for clarification from your instructor. They are there to help you, so you should never feel unsure about going to ask for clarification, or for a little extra direction. You could even ask them what they’re looking for in order to give good grades. For example, is it more about research, or a good writing style? Any tips you can glean from the people marking your assignments will help.

Use Past Papers And Study Materials

When you have a better understanding of what’s required, it can be helpful to use past papers and college study materials to give yourself an idea of the sort of thing that might be expected. Study materials can also give you an idea of the level of detail required and the standard expected by your college. If you’re not sure where to find these things, ask your instructor or librarian for help. Getting hold of some of these past materials will help to give you a framework for your learning, understand the types of assignments your college sets, and what success looks like to them.

Create A Plan And Work Schedule

Once you have a good understanding of the task at hand and what’s expected of you, it’s time to create a plan. This should be a detailed document that outlines everything you need to do in order to complete the assignment to a high standard. Your plan should include a timeline and deadlines for each task, as well as what resources you’ll need and any other information that will help you to complete the assignment.

Work In Short Bursts

One of the best pieces of advice for college students is to work in short bursts . This means setting a timer for a certain amount of time and working on the task at hand for that amount of time, before taking a break. This method is often recommended for students because it’s a more effective way of working than trying to power through for hours on end. It’s also a lot easier to stay focused when you’re working in short bursts. When you take a break, make sure you get up and move around, have a snack, or do something to take your mind off of your work so you can come back refreshed and ready to focus again.

Take Regular Breaks

It’s important to take regular breaks when you’re working on an assignment. This will help to keep you from getting too bogged down in the task and will allow you to come back to it with fresh eyes. When you’re taking a break, make sure you get up and move around, have a snack, or do something to take your mind off of your work so you can come back refreshed and ready to focus again.

Set A Deadline For Yourself

As well as any deadlines set by your instructor, it can be helpful to set a deadline for yourself. This should be a date or time by which you will have completed the assignment. Having a personal deadline will help to keep you on track and motivated to get the work done.

Don’t Leave It To The Last Minute

One of the worst things you can do is leave your college assignment to the last minute. This will only lead to stress and will likely result in a rushed and poorly done piece of work. If you start the assignment early, you’ll have more time to do it properly and you’ll be less likely to make mistakes. It will also give you time to deal with any unexpected circumstances, such as some additional research you decide you need to do, or dealing with a cold that leaves you feeling under the weather for a few days.

Start With The Easy Stuff

When you’re starting an assignment, it can be helpful to start with the easy stuff. This will help to get you into the flow of working on the task and will give you a sense of accomplishment. Once you’ve completed the easy stuff, you can move on to the more challenging tasks. This will help you to stay focused and motivated, and will make the whole process less daunting.

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How Much Homework is Too Much?

When redesigning a course or putting together a new course, faculty often struggle with how much homework and readings to assign. Too little homework and students might not be prepared for the class sessions or be able to adequately practice basic skills or produce sufficient in-depth work to properly master the learning goals of the course. Too much and some students may feel overwhelmed and find it difficult to keep up or have to sacrifice work in other courses.

A common rule of thumb is that students should study three hours for each credit hour of the course, but this isn’t definitive. Universities might recommend that students spend anywhere from two or three hours of study or as much as six to nine hours of study or more for each course credit hour. A 2014 study found that, nationwide, college students self reported spending about 17 hours each week on homework, reading and assignments. Studies of high school students show that too much homework can produce diminishing returns on student learning, so finding the right balance can be difficult.

There are no hard and fast rules about the amount of readings and homework that faculty assign. It will vary according to the university, the department, the level of the classes, and even other external factors that impact students in your course. (Duke’s faculty handbook addresses many facets of courses, such as absences, but not the typical amount of homework specifically.)

To consider the perspective of a typical student that might be similar to the situations faced at Duke, Harvard posted a blog entry by one of their students aimed at giving students new to the university about what they could expect. There are lots of readings, of course, but time has to be spent on completing problem sets, sometimes elaborate multimedia or research projects, responding to discussion posts and writing essays. Your class is one of several, and students have to balance the needs of your class with others and with clubs, special projects, volunteer work or other activities they’re involved with as part of their overall experience.

The Rice Center for Teaching Excellence has some online calculators for estimating class workload that can help you get a general understanding of the time it may take for a student to read a particular number of pages of material at different levels or to complete essays or other types of homework.

To narrow down your decision-making about homework when redesigning or creating your own course, you might consider situational factors that may influence the amount of homework that’s appropriate.

Connection with your learning goals

Is the homework clearly connected with the learning goals of your students for a particular class session or week in the course? Students will find homework beneficial and valuable if they feel that it is meaningful . If you think students might see readings or assignments as busy work, think about ways to modify the homework to make a clearer connection with what is happening in class. Resist the temptation to assign something because the students need to know it. Ask yourself if they will actually use it immediately in the course or if the material or exercises should be relegated to supplementary material.

Levels of performance

The type of readings and homework given to first year students will be very different from those given to more experienced individuals in higher-level courses. If you’re unsure if your readings or other work might be too easy (or too complex) for students in your course, ask a colleague in your department or at another university to give feedback on your assignment. If former students in the course (or a similar course) are available, ask them for feedback on a sample reading or assignment.

Common practices

What are the common practices in your department or discipline? Some departments, with particular classes, may have general guidelines or best practices you can keep in mind when assigning homework.

External factors

What type of typical student will be taking your course? If it’s a course preparing for a major or within an area of study, are there other courses with heavy workloads they might be taking at the same time? Are they completing projects, research, or community work that might make it difficult for them to keep up with a heavy homework load for your course?

Students who speak English as a second language, are first generation students, or who may be having to work to support themselves as they take courses may need support to get the most out of homework. Detailed instructions for the homework, along with outlining your learning goals and how the assignment connects the course, can help students understand how the readings and assignments fit into their studies. A reading guide, with questions prompts or background, can help students gain a better understanding of a reading. Resources to look up unfamiliar cultural references or terms can make readings and assignments less overwhelming.

If you would like more ideas about planning homework and assignments for your course or more information and guidance on course design and assessment, contact Duke Learning Innovation to speak with one of our consultants .

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Understanding and Estimating Instructional Time and Homework

Introduction.

What counts as “class time” — especially when you are adapting a course to a new format like hybrid or online? How do you structure time to maximize engagement and (in online or hybrid situations) get the most out of synchronous or in-person time? Here we explain the relationship between instructional time, homework, and credit hours, so you can understand what Champlain and our accreditors require. We also discuss some options for instructional time that may be very different from what you would do in the classroom.

Credit Hours, Instructional Time, and Out-of-Class Work

Students’ class loads are measured in credit hours; a typical full-time load at Champlain is 15 hours, usually equaling five three-hour classes, although this may vary. The number of credit hours associated with a course is determined by the number of hours it “meets” per week — that is, the amount of instructional time. (This will vary for capstones, internships, and some other course types.)

Most faculty who teach in person are not used to thinking about instructional time. Instead, we think about the hours that we are in the classroom with our students each week. But we can learn from Champlain College Online and other online or blended modes of learning that instructional time can take different forms, many of which might not involve synchronous or in-person interaction.

The key characteristic of instructional time is interaction between instructor and students. The New England Commission on Higher Education (NECHE), Champlain’s accreditor, requires that we provide quality learning experiences that include “ regular, substantive academic interaction ” between instructor and students. Regular interaction means that the faculty member connects with students fairly frequently, in a way that students can grow to expect. Substantive interaction means that the faculty-student interaction is academic in nature and initiated by the instructor.

Therefore, in a hybrid or online course, instructional time is the total hours your students spend in synchronous activities AND asynchronous instructional equivalents like watching recorded lectures, taking quizzes via Canvas, participating in discussion forums, and activities you might normally do as a group, such as a virtual field trip or service project.

According to NECHE, alongside instructional time each week, students should spend approximately twice the number of hours they spend “in class” doing work for that class. That is, if a course is worth three credits (about two and a half hours of instructional time), on average students should be doing approximately five hours of preparation and out-of-class assignments each week, for a total of seven and a half hours of time committed to that course. Rice University’s Center for Teaching Excellence provides an interactive tool for estimating out-of-class student time commitments.

For more information on how this math works, please see Albright College’s explanation of Carnegie Units and credit hours .

Planning Online or Hybrid Instructional Time Equivalents

In the classroom, we know what constitutes instructional time: things we do when we are physically present with students. In fully online situations, we must consider the amount of time students are expected to spend on asynchronous instructional equivalents. In hybrid situations, we must carefully consider the mix of in-person and virtual interaction to calculate instructional time.

Virtual instructional time can involve adaptations of in-person instruction. It can also involve different kinds of activities. Some strategies for interactive, engaging instruction that does not take place through videoconference lecturing include:

Possible Adaptations of In-Person Instruction

• Recorded lecture
• Synchronous small group discussions, critiques, labs, projects, etc.
• Asynchronous discussion forums
• Quizzes and tests delivered via Canvas
• Guest speaker virtual “visit” or webinar
• Library education sessions or consultations with a research librarian (currently offered virtually)

Possible Instructional Time Innovations

• One-on-one or small-group synchronous conversations with the instructor (similar to the tutorial system )
• Individual real-world experiences shared through reflection or discussion (e.g., plant observation walk, interviewing a professional in the field, service learning, etc)
• Virtual tours and field trips
• Lecture-style slides, or written instructor-created content that would normally be delivered via lecture in class
• Collaborative whiteboard, brainstorming, and/or problem-solving activities (synchronous or asynchronous)
• Collaborative reading and annotation using a tool like Hypothesis or Perusall
• Remote/virtual labs
• Low-stakes surveys, quizzes, or check-ins
• Peer review (synchronous or asynchronous)
• Contributing to and commenting on a virtual gallery

There are many options! This list is not intended to be exhaustive. When deciding on instructional time activities, you should focus on options that are highly interactive (student-faculty and/or student-student) and/or focus on experiences like labs, field trips, interviews, or service learning.

Estimating Workloads

This wide range of strategies is great, and it raises an important question: how long does it take students to do these things? How do you get the amount of instructional time equivalents to roughly mirror the number of hours you would spend in a classroom with your students, when you students are completing tasks on their own time and may not work at the same speed?

First of all, something to consider: students generally work a lot less hard when they are sitting in a classroom taking part in an all-class discussion than they do when everyone is required to contribute a discussion post or two on Canvas. A group lab may be less work than a virtual one. The great thing about this is that your instruction can become much richer as students branch out into the things that most pique their interest. However, be aware that asynchronous instructional time can be much more mental labor and organizational work than some forms of classroom instruction, and so your students may be working harder for the same amount of instructional time, or may be spending more time than you think. Create your prompts, assignments, and grading schemes in a way that acknowledges this increased effort.

Pragmatically, here are some estimated amounts of time students might spend doing common virtual learning tasks. (We’re skipping over tasks that have a clearer time commitment like lecture videos and timed quizzes.)

• Discussion posts: minimum of 30 minutes for a 250-word/one-paragraph post and skimming other posts. Direct responses to other students’ posts may take a little less time.
• Blog post: approximately 30 minutes for a 250-word reflection post. If you require research or longer posts, allot at least an hour.
• Case study activities: account for reading time as well as writing time, which will vary widely depending on the exercise. An optimal adult reader who reads visually, does not have reading-related disabilities, and is fluent in English can read about 300 words per minute with no new concepts. For new concepts, writing for an academic audience (eg. journal articles), special genres of writing (e.g. legal cases), or texts you want students to analyze deeply, estimate 150 words per minute. Allow writing time as above. Thus a case study analysis based on a news article–which is a great option for a discussion forum!–with a 250-word response might take 30-45 minutes. On the other hand, analysis of a fifteen-page journal article with a 250-word response could easily take an hour and a half or more.
• Independently arranged interview, field trip, or service learning experience: make sure to add an estimate of the time it takes to arrange an experience (if students are doing that work) to the experience itself.

These suggested times may seem slow to you–but remember, you are estimating based on the speed of an average student.

We also provide a resource on strategies for balancing synchronous and asynchronous teaching , as well as some slides with examples of how to balance and estimate synchronous and asynchronous instructional time equivalents in different types of classes.

Works Consulted

Other institutions’ approaches.

• Course Workload Estimator , Rice University Center for Teaching Excellence
• Credit and Contact Hour and Instructional Equivalencies Guidelines , Valdosta State University
• Guidelines for Instructional Time Equivalencies Across Formats/Assignment of Credit Hours , Misericordia University
• Instructional Equivalencies Chart , Albright College

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Caroline Toy

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How To Keep Up With College Assignments (Ultimate Guide)

Keeping up with college assignments can feel like trying to swim upstream with your hands tied behind your back. Even though this can feel impossible sometimes, there are many things you can do to make your semester go as smoothly and successfully as possible.

Here’s how to keep up with college assignments:

• Keep a weekly planner.
• Take notes by hand.
• Form an accountability group.
• Avoid burnout at all costs.

This article is meant to guide you through your college courses and to help you keep up with your college assignments. You will learn how to keep up with your studies, and how to avoid burnout at the same time. So let’s keep going.

1. Keep a Weekly Planner

If you’re always unsure of what you need to complete in a given week or what’s coming up in your classes, then you’re setting yourself up for failure. Get yourself a weekly planner and organize your thoughts and schedule for the week. 

People who use planners are usually much more organized and are able to tackle the events of a week efficiently and effectively. Take an hour at the start of the week, such as Sunday or Monday, and write out everything that you are responsible for that week.

Plan out the best days to complete each so that you’re not crunched for time.

Most weekly planners also have monthly pages, so you can also plan ahead for assignments that may require more than a week’s work. A larger project or final paper might need two or more weeks, so keeping up with the monthly portion will set you up to plan these types of assignments accordingly.

My favorite undated planner is the Clever Fox Undated Weekly and Monthly Planner (link to Amazon). This planner is great because you can pick it up and start whenever since there are no set dates on the pages. 

It helps break down large tasks into smaller, more doable ones and helps keep your priorities for the week in order. 

I usually recommend this planner for people who are new to using a planner because if you miss a week or struggle to get into the habit of filling it out, you aren’t left with a bunch of blank pages killing your motivation. 

Just pick up where you left off.

If you prefer a dated planner, then the Moleskine 12 Month Weekly Planner (link to Amazon) is my go-to, which is what I use for everything. The pages are clean, simple, and easy to keep up with. 

There are a few different sizes and colors, but I find that the pocket size in plain black is classic and fits everywhere I need it to. 

Things To Avoid in a Weekly Planner

It’s both a blessing and a curse that planners have absolutely skyrocketed in popularity. There are so many to choose from, with a million different sorts of goals in mind. Planners for fitness, water consumption, beer-drinking, inspirational quotes, or knitting progress all exist now. 

Being able to pick a planner that fits you best is great. However, these planners are bloated with useless pages and sections. Okay, maybe not useless but not incredibly useful either.

If your planner is meant to help you keep your assignments straight and limit your time procrastinating, then a planner with pages to list all of your favorite moments from the previous day, month, and year won’t help you. 

If you want a planner to help practice positivity and gratitude, that’s great. Just keep them separate, and put on one on your nightstand for pleasure and one in your backpack for work.

Schedule a Weekly Catch-Up Day

It can be very helpful to have a day or half-day schedule that’s always reserved for just catching up on work that you have fallen a bit behind on. This isn’t to be scheduled for anything else so that you can always count on some time to just sit and catch up before things get out of hand.

If you’ve been able to keep up that week, having that day completely free is something to look forward to. You can use that time to do whatever you love most.

2. Take Notes by Hand

Your classes are probably full of students typing out their notes on their laptops. This trend has been such a detriment to students being able to retain what they heard in their classes.

One widely cited study concluded that those who take notes on their laptops were much less likely to comprehend the content they were typing. Instead, they were unable to form the concepts that would help them understand the material ( source ).

In addition to laptops inviting a whole host of distractions into the classroom, typed notes are usually more like shallow transcriptions of the lecture. The hand-written notes would help them process the information that was communicated instead. 

Students who wrote out their notes with pen and paper were more likely to write out the lectures in their own words . When you take the lecture and translate it into a language that makes the most sense to you, then you’ll have a deeper understanding of the material and the ability to recall the concepts you learned. 

If you’re working through your assignments and are able to easily recall the lectures, you’ll be much faster than if you’re staring blankly at the script you wrote out on a laptop. 

Leave the technology at home. You’ll have less distraction and will find that you actually need less time to complete your assignments since you’ll have actually learned the material you’re working on.

3. Form an Accountability Group

Something that students report as being a huge help with keeping up on college assignments is having a group of other students keeping them accountable. Some of the different ways that students have formed accountability groups are with group messaging, tackling assignments together, and weekly work meetings.

The best way to form an accountability group will depend on who you have that would be interested in joining. If there’s enough interest in a particular class, then you might find that getting together and working on the weekly assignments together is very helpful. 

However, it can be just as helpful to form a weekly group even if the members are in different classes. 

In my own undergraduate years, I would form a group of a handful of other students, and we would meet up twice a week to work. Everyone was in different classes and had different work to do, but working together made it much more enjoyable.

4. Avoid Burnout at All Costs

The most important thing you can do to keep up with your college assignments, by far, is to avoid burnout. It doesn’t matter how on top of things you are the first few months if everything falls apart in the last weeks when assignments tend to be worth much more. 

Many other articles and academic advisors will stress that you must always put your college classes and their assignments first before anything. However, that’s bad advice. 

That’s the advice that led to a generation of burnt-out students and young adults. 

Burnout results from long exposure to stress, when you’re under the impression that you’re failing to keep up with your responsibilities or are just barely making it. It’s made up of physical, psychological, and relationship effects on the person ( source ).

Thankfully, the prevalence of burnout is becoming recognized as a serious problem, and universities are beginning to take notice of the effects it has on their student population.

Ultimately, before anything, the thing that should always come first is your own health and well-being. If you’re taking good care of yourself, then getting your work done throughout the whole semester will be much less stressful than if you’re overworking, undersleeping, and at your wits’ end on most days. 

The best way to get through the college semester and keep up with your assignments is to prevent burnout from happening in the first place. However, if you do feel as though you’re beginning to have some symptoms, then tackling that and getting your health in order should become the top priority. 

Once you’ve recognized that you’re experiencing burnout, if you ignore it and try to keep on trudging through the semester, then you can end up much worse off, both in your health and in your college classes.

Recognizing Warning Signs of Burnout

If you’re worried about whether or not you’re experiencing burnout, look back on the last few weeks of your life and make an honest assessment of how you felt on those days ( source ).

Additionally, begin to keep a journal where you can just quickly write down how you’re feeling physically and mentally. This can be a great tool for reference when looking for symptoms of burnout since memory isn’t always the most reliable guide. 

If you’re feeling some of these early signs, then you should seek some help before things begin to snowball:

• You’re feeling drained and exhausted most days.
• Having consistent body and headaches.
• Loss of appetite.
• Problems sleeping.
• Problems with feeling motivated.
• Easily feeling overwhelmed.
• Becoming apathetic towards school, work, and other pastimes.

If you’re experiencing some or all of these signs, then it’s time to seek some outside help. Most colleges provide free counseling services and support groups specifically for burnout since it has become such a burden on students. 

Additionally, it might not hurt to reach out to the professors of your classes. 

More often than not, they’ll be very empathetic and be willing to create a timetable for you to get back on track in a way that also allows you to recover from the effects of burnout at the same time. 

Ways To Combat Burnout

The best offense against burnout is a super strong defense. Taking care of yourself throughout the semester before things get out of hand will be incredibly helpful in keeping your stress levels at a manageable level. 

Taking a holistic approach to your life has been shown to do a lot of good when it comes to combating burnout in chronically stressful settings, such as college. 

Some of the best things you can do to stave off burnout are:

• Adopting a consistent exercise routine.
• Taking the time to eat well every day.
• Avoid alcohol and other drugs.
• Maintain your friendships and other relationships.
• Give yourself time to relax.

These are just some of the things you can do to try and keep up with your health and well-being. This is super important and will directly translate into further success in college as well ( source ).

Habits To Help Keep Up With College Assignments

Once the semester really begins to pick up, it can feel like you’re drowning in assignments, papers, and studying for exams. Once you start to fall behind, catching backup can be very difficult and exhausting. 

Keeping up with college assignments is a lot of hard work. 

Everyone struggles to keep up sometimes, so it’s not just you. Many college students feel alone in the struggle, so a good place to start is with the knowledge that this is something that all people at college struggle with from time to time, even the professors.

With this in mind, the difference between students who manage to keep up and those who don’t are usually the implementation of good habits. They have learned how or were taught how to study and work efficiently and have used that knowledge to make good habits to help succeed in college and later in their career too.

By learning what these habits are and practicing them in your own life, you’ll also start to see results in your success at college. 

Even when you stumble one week and find yourself procrastinating on an assignment, it’ll be much easier to get back on track if you’ve been practicing the following nine habits for keeping up with college assignments.

Final Thoughts

College is often talked about as some of the best and most exciting times of a person’s life. However, there’s a lot of stress and responsibility in college that isn’t talked about near enough.

Hopefully, with the habits I have discussed in the article, you’ll be able to have all of the fun the college experience has to offer while still keeping up with your college assignments and being successful in your classes!

Recommended Reading:

• Passing Grades in College: Understanding the Impact of a D
• Curved Grades – A Complete College Student’s Guide
• Unweighted vs. Weighted GPA Explained

Emily is an engineer at a Fortune 100 company. Her degree is in Chemical Engineering with minors in Mathematics and Chemistry. She completed 4 internships in college and graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2020. She is from Texas and currently lives in Seattle, WA. Emily loves hiking, traveling, and playing guitar. She is a very proud dog mom to her fur baby, Oliver.

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How to stay on top of your assignments in college

July 15, 2021 •

6 min reading

Consider for a moment that a full  47 percent of college students  reportedly believe that their high schools did not do an adequate job of preparing them with organizational skills. Similarly, more than half believe that better organization would help them improve their grades. Clearly, the ability of a student to keep track of their classes and assignments plays an important role in college success and the confidence students have in their capabilities.

Learning to stay on top of your assignments plays an important role in your academic outcome. College students often find themselves facing a number of different outside factors that make focus challenging, with multiple classes that have intensive schedules, external commitments, and interpersonal relationships. As many as a  quarter of college students  also become chronic procrastinators, which can greatly impact their ability to complete their assignments and successfully obtain their degrees.

Fortunately, with proper planning, you can learn to improve your ability to stay on top of your assignments and assessments, improving your performance and setting you on the path towards success.

Write all of your deadlines in a calendar or planner

Once you get your syllabus, go slowly through it, week by week, and record all assignments, assessments, and other important dates on your calendar or planner. Many students will take several different classes, in addition to outside responsibilities such as jobs or internships. Using a common calendar or planner will make it significantly easier for you to keep track of all the different competing dates.

You will see weeks beforehand, for example, if you have multiple assignments due the same week or more than one exam on the same day. Knowing this information far in advance makes it easier to plan ahead and make the necessary preparations to help you succeed in each class.

Split large projects up into manageable sections, setting your own deadlines

In your classes at university, you will likely have a number of larger projects throughout the semester. Multi-page papers and research projects, as well as cumulative exams, should be expected.

However, with these types of assignments, students cannot count on their ability to cram all of their studies into a day or two right before they are due. This is particularly true when more than one large assignment must be turned in within a few days. Instead, successful students will begin these assignments weeks ahead of time. They work slowly on the project over time so that right before the project is due, they have nothing to worry about aside from finishing touches.

At a university level, however, you cannot count on professors to help you organize the progression of the assignments. They will not likely give you smaller deadlines to complete project outlines, organize research, or complete first drafts. Instead, you must create these deadlines yourself if you want to complete the assignment to the best of your ability.

Therefore, when looking at your syllabus, note any larger projects and their due dates. Think about the parts of the assignment that you will need to complete, such as an outline and compiling your research. Then, create your own deadlines that will allow you to break up these projects into more manageable chunks. Use these deadlines to keep your project on track, leaving time to draft and edit, so that they do not become overwhelming.

Create daily to-do lists and routines

Throughout your university career, to help you stay on track with your assignments, you will want to create a regular routine. A routine that includes times of study, attending classes, and periods for relaxation will help you remain on track with your assignments.

When people start to feel overwhelmed and do not know when they will have the chance to unwind with friends, it can actually make it harder to concentrate and be successful. Instead, you want to have a schedule that provides enough regular time to meet your daily goals and time built in to relax.

Similarly, creating daily to-do lists will help you prioritize your daily tasks. Knowing the tasks that should be addressed first will help you create that feeling of accomplishment, providing additional motivation to keep moving through the schedule.

Determine the times that work best for you to study

As you build your study calendar, remember also that everyone has a study time that works best for them. For example, some students might find that they are more of a night owl. In other words, after dinner they get their best work done with the light on and working hard even after others have gone to bed. At the opposite end of the spectrum, some people will work most productively when they can get their assignments done first thing in the morning.

Consider which time of day fits best with your personality and established habits. It may require some experimenting, particularly when you first begin college-level classes, until you find the times of the day that work best for you. Once you begin to understand your own study habits, build these insights into your calendar and your daily to-do list.

Create a study space that encourages focus

Effectively getting your work completed also depends on you working effectively. You want to consider the environment that helps you to function best, and then create a workspace that will nurture your studies. For example, as you carve out a study space in your home, a desk or table along with some shelves where you can keep your books and materials organized can be very helpful.

When designing your study space, think about the type of environment most conducive to studying for you. Some people may work best when they have complete quiet, and so space away from the main living areas and others who live in the home may benefit them most. On the other hand, some students may find that they need a little background noise and community interaction, which means that space closer to the kitchen or living room, as well as a radio, may help them create the perfect study space for them to complete their assignments.

Find a professor or mentor that can help you stay focused on your long-term goals

As you progress through your classes, it can be a challenge to stay focused on your end goal of earning your degree. You entered your program because you want to begin working in a particular field, but when you find yourself stressed in the midst of classes, it can sometimes be challenging to keep moving forward.

A professor or mentor who has experience in the area can provide you with tremendous benefits. They can offer you advice as you begin progressing through your classes. They can help you understand how your different classes will help you thrive in the field and provide guidance if you end up struggling in a class. They provide outside motivation to encourage you to remain focused on your assignments so that you can do your best work.

As you prepare for graduation, these professionals can help offer some advice and wisdom about entering the field. They can serve as references as you begin to apply for jobs and otherwise help you prepare for your exciting career.

Engage with study groups

Study groups also will provide you with a great way to stay on track with your assignments. Connecting with other people in your program will help you build relationships that will benefit you academically and professionally. Making yourself accountable to others in your program by meeting regularly for study groups will also provide you with an excellent source of motivation. You will find yourself with an increased drive to complete your assignments and prepare your study materials ahead of time so that you will not disappoint the other members of your group.

These connections with other students in your program can also provide you with assistance if you find a particular course or subject challenging. Studying together can help you answer your own questions while building and cementing your own insight on the subject. This will help you improve your own performance on your assignments and help you feel more confident in your studies.

Throughout your time at college or university, staying on top of assignments can be one of the biggest struggles that students face. Even the strongest students may find themselves feeling a bit overwhelmed as they try to learn how to juggle the syllabi and expectations of a number of different classes at once. Yet,  studies have shown a relationship  between academic performance and the ability of students to stay on task. Learning how to organize yourself and stay on top of your assignments can help you lower your stress levels and improve your grades.

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Students spend three times longer on homework than average, survey reveals

Sonya Kulkarni and Pallavi Gorantla | Jan 9, 2022

Graphic by Sonya Kulkarni

The National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association have suggested that a healthy number of hours that students should be spending can be determined by the “10-minute rule.” This means that each grade level should have a maximum homework time incrementing by 10 minutes depending on their grade level (for instance, ninth-graders would have 90 minutes of homework, 10th-graders should have 100 minutes, and so on).

As ‘finals week’ rapidly approaches, students not only devote effort to attaining their desired exam scores but make a last attempt to keep or change the grade they have for semester one by making up homework assignments.

High schoolers reported doing an average of 2.7 hours of homework per weeknight, according to a study by the Washington Post from 2018 to 2020 of over 50,000 individuals. A survey of approximately 200 Bellaire High School students revealed that some students spend over three times this number.

The demographics of this survey included 34 freshmen, 43 sophomores, 54 juniors and 54 seniors on average.

When asked how many hours students spent on homework in a day on average, answers ranged from zero to more than nine with an average of about four hours. In contrast, polled students said that about one hour of homework would constitute a healthy number of hours.

Junior Claire Zhang said she feels academically pressured in her AP schedule, but not necessarily by the classes.

“The class environment in AP classes can feel pressuring because everyone is always working hard and it makes it difficult to keep up sometimes.” Zhang said.

A total of 93 students reported that the minimum grade they would be satisfied with receiving in a class would be an A. This was followed by 81 students, who responded that a B would be the minimum acceptable grade. 19 students responded with a C and four responded with a D.

“I am happy with the classes I take, but sometimes it can be very stressful to try to keep up,” freshman Allyson Nguyen said. “I feel academically pressured to keep an A in my classes.”

Up to 152 students said that grades are extremely important to them, while 32 said they generally are more apathetic about their academic performance.

Last year, nine valedictorians graduated from Bellaire. They each achieved a grade point average of 5.0. HISD has never seen this amount of valedictorians in one school, and as of now there are 14 valedictorians.

“I feel that it does degrade the title of valedictorian because as long as a student knows how to plan their schedule accordingly and make good grades in the classes, then anyone can be valedictorian,” Zhang said.

Bellaire offers classes like physical education and health in the summer. These summer classes allow students to skip the 4.0 class and not put it on their transcript. Some electives also have a 5.0 grade point average like debate.

Close to 200 students were polled about Bellaire having multiple valedictorians. They primarily answered that they were in favor of Bellaire having multiple valedictorians, which has recently attracted significant acclaim .

Senior Katherine Chen is one of the 14 valedictorians graduating this year and said that she views the class of 2022 as having an extraordinary amount of extremely hardworking individuals.

“I think it was expected since freshman year since most of us knew about the others and were just focused on doing our personal best,” Chen said.

Chen said that each valedictorian achieved the honor on their own and deserves it.

“I’m honestly very happy for the other valedictorians and happy that Bellaire is such a good school,” Chen said. “I don’t feel any less special with 13 other valedictorians.”

Nguyen said that having multiple valedictorians shows just how competitive the school is.

“It’s impressive, yet scary to think about competing against my classmates,” Nguyen said.

Offering 30 AP classes and boasting a significant number of merit-based scholars Bellaire can be considered a competitive school.

“I feel academically challenged but not pressured,” Chen said. “Every class I take helps push me beyond my comfort zone but is not too much to handle.”

Students have the opportunity to have off-periods if they’ve met all their credits and are able to maintain a high level of academic performance. But for freshmen like Nguyen, off periods are considered a privilege. Nguyen said she usually has an hour to five hours worth of work everyday.

“Depending on the day, there can be a lot of work, especially with extra curriculars,” Nguyen said. “Although, I am a freshman, so I feel like it’s not as bad in comparison to higher grades.”

According to the survey of Bellaire students, when asked to evaluate their agreement with the statement “students who get better grades tend to be smarter overall than students who get worse grades,” responders largely disagreed.

Zhang said that for students on the cusp of applying to college, it can sometimes be hard to ignore the mental pressure to attain good grades.

“As a junior, it’s really easy to get extremely anxious about your GPA,” Zhang said. “It’s also a very common but toxic practice to determine your self-worth through your grades but I think that we just need to remember that our mental health should also come first. Sometimes, it’s just not the right day for everyone and one test doesn’t determine our smartness.”

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Anonymous • Nov 21, 2023 at 10:32 am

It’s not really helping me understand how much.

josh • May 9, 2023 at 9:58 am

Kassie • May 6, 2022 at 12:29 pm

Im using this for an English report. This is great because on of my sources needed to be from another student. Homework drives me insane. Im glad this is very updated too!!

Kaylee Swaim • Jan 25, 2023 at 9:21 pm

I am also using this for an English report. I have to do an argumentative essay about banning homework in schools and this helps sooo much!

Izzy McAvaney • Mar 15, 2023 at 6:43 pm

I am ALSO using this for an English report on cutting down school days, homework drives me insane!!

E. Elliott • Apr 25, 2022 at 6:42 pm

I’m from Louisiana and am actually using this for an English Essay thanks for the information it was very informative.

Nabila Wilson • Jan 10, 2022 at 6:56 pm

Interesting with the polls! I didn’t realize about 14 valedictorians, that’s crazy.

New Data Reveal How Many Students Are Using AI to Cheat

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AI-fueled cheating—and how to stop students from doing it—has become a major concern for educators.

But how prevalent is it? Newly released data from a popular plagiarism-detection company is shedding some light on the problem.

And it may not be as bad as educators think it is.

Of the more than 200 million writing assignments reviewed by Turnitin’s AI detection tool over the past year, some AI use was detected in about 1 out of 10 assignments, while only 3 out of every 100 assignments were generated mostly by AI.

These numbers have not changed much from when Turnitin released data in August of 2023 about the first three months of the use of its detection tool, said the company’s chief product officer, Annie Chechitelli.

“We hit a steady state, and it hasn’t changed dramatically since then,” she said. “There are students who are leaning on AI too much. But it’s not pervasive. It wasn’t this, ‘the sky is falling.’”

The fact that the number of students using AI to complete their schoolwork hasn’t skyrocketed in the past year dovetails with survey findings from Stanford University that were released in December. Researchers there polled students in 40 different high schools and found that the percentage of students who admitted to cheating has remained flat since the advent of ChatGPT and other readily available generative AI tools. For years before the release of ChatGPT, between 60 and 70 percent of students admitted to cheating, and that remained the same in the 2023 surveys, the researchers said.

Turnitin’s latest data release shows that in 11 percent of assignments run through its AI detection tool that at least 20 percent of each assignment had evidence of AI use in the writing. In 3 percent of the assignments, each assignment was made up of 80 percent or more of AI writing, which tracks closely with what the company was seeing just 3 months after it launched its AI detection tool .

Experts warn against fixating on cheating and plagiarism

However, a separate survey of educators has found that AI detection tools are becoming more popular with teachers, a trend that worries some experts.

The survey of middle and high school teachers by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit focused on technology policy and consumer rights, found that 68 percent have used an AI detection tool, up substantially from the previous year. Teachers also reported in the same survey that students are increasingly getting in trouble for using AI to complete assignments. In the 2023-24 school year, 63 percent of teachers said students had gotten in trouble for being accused of using generative AI in their schoolwork, up from 48 percent last school year.

Despite scant evidence that AI is fueling a wave in cheating, half of teachers reported in the Center for Democracy and Technology survey that generative AI has made them more distrustful that their students are turning in original work.

Some experts warn that fixating on plagiarism and cheating is the wrong focus.

This creates an environment where students are afraid to talk with their teachers about AI tools because they might get in trouble, said Tara Nattrass, the managing director of innovation and strategy at ISTE+ASCD, a nonprofit that offers content and professional development on educational technology and curriculum.

“We need to reframe the conversation and engage with students around the ways in which AI can support them in their learning and the ways in which it may be detrimental to their learning,” she said in an email to Education Week. “We want students to know that activities like using AI to write essays and pass them off as their own is harmful to their learning while using AI to break down difficult topics to strengthen understanding can help them in their learning.”

Shift the focus to teaching AI literacy, crafting better policies

Students said in the Stanford survey that is generally how they think AI should be used: as an aid to understanding concepts rather than a fancy plagiarism tool.

Nattrass said schools should be teaching AI literacy while including students in drafting clear AI guidelines.

Nattrass also recommends against schools using AI detection tools. They are too unreliable to authenticate students’ work, she said, and false positives can be devastating to individual students and breed a larger environment of mistrust. Some research has found that AI detection tools are especially weak at identifying the original writing of English learners from AI-driven prose.

“Students are using AI and will continue to do so with or without educator guidance,” Nattrass said. “Teaching students about safe and ethical AI use is a part of our responsibility to help them become contributing digital citizens.”

AI detection software actually uses AI to function: these tools are trained on large amounts of machine- and human-created writing so that the software can ideally recognize differences between the two.

Turnitin claims that its AI detector is 99 percent accurate at determining whether a document was written with AI, specifically ChatGPT, as long as the document was composed with at least 20 percent of AI writing, according to the company’s website.

Chechitelli pointed out that no detector or test—whether it’s a fire alarm or medical test—is 100 percent accurate.

While she said teachers should not rely solely on AI detectors to determine if a student is using AI to cheat, she makes the case that detection tools can provide teachers with valuable data.

“It is not definitive proof,” she said. “It’s a signal that taken with other signals can be used to start a conversation with a student.”

As educators become more comfortable with generative AI, Chechitelli said she predicts the focus will shift from detection to transparency: how should students cite or communicate the ways they’ve used AI? When should educators encourage students to use AI in assignments? And do schools have clear policies around AI use and what, exactly, constitutes plagiarism or cheating?

“What the feedback we’re hearing now from students is: ‘I’m gonna use it. I would love a little bit more guidance on how and when so I don’t get in trouble,” but still use it to learn, Chechitelli said.

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Module 7: Learning Strategies

Class-time to study-time ratio, learning outcomes.

• Describe typical ratios of in-class to out-of-class work per credit hour and how to effectively schedule your study time

Class-Time and Study-Time Ratios

After Kai decides to talk to his guidance counselor about his stress and difficulty balancing his activities, his guidance counselor recommends that Kai create a schedule. This schedule will help him set time for homework, studying, work, and leisure activities so that he avoids procrastinating on his schoolwork. His counselor explains that if Kai sets aside specific time to study every day—rather than simply studying when he feels like he has the time—his study habits will become more regular, which will improve Kai’s learning. 

At the end of their session, Kai and his counselor have put together a rough schedule for Kai to further refine as he goes through the next couple of weeks.

Although Kai knows that studying is important and he is trying to keep up with homework, he really needs to work on time management. This skill is challenging for many college students, especially ones with lots of responsibilities outside of school. Unlike high school classes, college classes meet less often and college students are expected to do more independent learning, homework, and studying.

You might have heard that the ratio of classroom time to study time should be one to two or one to three. This ratio would mean that for every hour you spend in class, you should plan to spend two to three hours out of class working independently on course assignments. If your composition class meets for one hour, three times a week, you’d be expected to devote from six to nine hours each week on reading assignments, writing assignments, etc.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that the one-to-two or one-to-three time ratio is generally more appropriate for semester-long courses of eighteen weeks. More and more institutions of higher learning are moving away from semesters to terms ranging from eight to sixteen weeks long.

The recommended class-time to study-time ratio might change depending on the course (how rigorous it is and how many credits it’s worth), the institution’s expectations, the length of the school term, and the frequency with which a class meets. For example, if you’re used to taking classes on a quarter system of ten weeks, but then you start taking courses over an eight-weeks period, you may need to spend more time studying outside of class since you’re trying to learn the same amount of information in a shorter term period. You may also find that if one of the courses you’re taking is worth one-and-a-half credit hours but the rest of your courses are worth one credit hour each, you may need to put in more study hours for your one-and-a-half credit hours course. Finally, if you’re taking a course that only meets once a week such as a writing workshop, you may consider putting in more study and reading time in between class meetings than the general one-to-two or one-to-three ratio.

If you account for all the classes you’re taking in a given semester, the study time really adds up—and if it sounds like a lot of work, it is! Remember, this schedule is temporary while you’re in school. The only way to stay on top of the workload is by creating a schedule to help you manage your time. You might decide to use a weekly or monthly schedule—or both. Whatever you choose, the following tips can help you design a smart schedule that’s easy to follow and stick with.

Start with Fixed Time Commitments

First off, mark down the commitments that don’t allow any flexibility. These include class meetings, work hours, appointments, etc. Capturing the fixed parts of your schedule can help you see where there are blocks of time that can be used for other activities.

Kai’s Schedule

Kai is taking four classes: Spanish 101, U.S. History, College Algebra, and Introduction to Psychology. He also has a fixed work schedule—he works 27 hours a week.

Consider Your Studying and Homework Habits

When are you most productive? Are you a morning person or a night owl? Block out your study times accordingly. You’ll also want to factor in any resources you might need. For instance, if you prefer to study very early or late in the day, and you’re working on a research paper, you might want to check the library hours to make sure it’s open when you need it.

Since Kai’s Spanish class starts his schedule at 9:00 a.m. every day, Kai decides to use that as the base for his schedule. He doesn’t usually have trouble waking up in the mornings (except for on the weekends), so he decides that he can do a bit of studying before class. His Spanish practice is often something he can do while eating or traveling, so this gives him a bit of leniency with his schedule.

Kai’s marked work in grey, classes in green, and dedicated study time in yellow:

Even if you prefer weekly over monthly schedules, write reminders for yourself and keep track of any upcoming projects, papers, or exams. You will also want to prepare for these assignments in advance. Most students eventually discover (the hard way) that cramming for exams the night before and waiting till the last minute to start on a term paper is a poor strategy. Procrastination creates a lot of unnecessary stress, and the resulting final product—whether an exam, lab report, or paper—is rarely your best work. Try simple things to break down large tasks, such as setting aside an hour or so each day to work on them during the weeks leading up to the deadline. If you get stuck, get help from your instructor early, rather than waiting until the day before an assignment is due.

Schedule Leisure Time

It might seem impossible to leave room in your schedule for fun activities, but every student needs and deserves to socialize and relax on a regular basis. Try to make this time something you look forward to and count on, and use it as a reward for getting things done. You might reserve every Friday or Saturday evening for going out with friends, for example. Perhaps your children have sporting events or special occasions you want to make time for. Try to reschedule your study time so you have enough time to study and enough time to do things outside of school that you want to do.

When you look at Kai’s schedule, you can see that he’s left Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings open. While he plans on using Sundays to complete larger assignments when he needs to, he’s left his Friday and Saturday evenings open for leisure.

time ratio: in an academic context, this refers to the number of hours a student should plan to work for each hour spent in a scheduled class

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Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students?

It was when the shuttle bus stopped coming that Luka Fernandes began to worry.

Fernandes was a student at Newbury College near Boston, whose enrollment had declined in the previous two decades from more than 5,300 to about 600.

“Things started closing down,” Fernandes remembered. “The food went downhill. It felt like they didn’t really care anymore.”

The private, nonprofit school had been placed on probation by its accreditors because of its shaky finances. Then the shuttle bus connecting the suburban campus with the nearest station on the public transportation system started running late or not showing up at all. “That was one of the things that made us feel like they were giving up.”

After students went home for their winter holiday, an email came: Newbury would shut down at the end of the next semester.

“It was, ‘Unfortunately we have to close after all these many years, and blah, blah, blah,’ ” said Fernandes, who was a junior. “I was very angry.”

The loans that students had taken out to pay the college weren’t forgiven, “which was infuriating. I had already put so much money into my education, and my family didn’t have that money. How am I going to apply this to my future if it doesn’t exist?”

This and other questions are on the minds of more and more students this spring as the pace of college closings dramatically speeds up.

About one university or college per week so far this year, on average, has announced that it will close or merge. That’s up from a little more than two a month last year , according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, or SHEEO.

So many colleges are folding that some students who moved from one to another have now found that their new school will also close, often with little or no warning. Some of the students at Newbury, when it closed in 2019, had moved there from nearby Mount Ida College, for example, which shut down the year before.

Most students at colleges that close give up on their educations altogether. Fewer than half transfer to other institutions , a SHEEO study found. Of those, fewer than half stay long enough to get degrees. Many lose credits when they move from one school to another and have to spend longer in college, often taking out more loans to pay for it.

The rest join the growing number of Americans — now more than 40 million , according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center — who spent time and money to go to college but never finished.

“I was asking my dad, ‘Can I not go back?’” said Fernandes, who eventually decided to continue at another college and now works as a patient coordinator at a hospital.

“I’m glad I did. But it honestly scares me for the future of education. I’m not sure where education’s going to go if all of these colleges keep closing.”

That is almost certain to happen. As many as 1 in 10 four-year colleges and universities are in financial peril , the consulting firm EY Parthenon estimates.

“It’s simply supply and demand,” said Gary Stocker, a former chief of staff at Westminster College in Missouri and the founder of College Viability, which evaluates institutions’ financial stability. The closings follow an enrollment decline of 14 percent in the decade through 2022, the most recent period for which the figures are available from the Education Department. A decline of as much as 15 percent is projected to begin next year.

Already this year, and within a span of a few days, Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama, Fontbonne University in St. Louis and Eastern Gateway Community College in Ohio all announced that they would close — Birmingham-Southern in May, Fontbonne next year and Eastern Gateway by June, unless it gets a financial bailout.

The for-profit University of Antelope Valley in California was ordered by the state to shut down because of financial shortfalls. Lincoln Christian University in Illinois and Magdalen College in New Hampshire will close in May, Johnson University of Florida in June and Hodges University in Florida by August. The College of Saint Rose in New York, Cabrini University in Pennsylvania, Oak Point University in Illinois, Goddard College in Vermont and the Staten Island campus of St. John’s University will all be shuttered by the end of this semester.

Notre Dame College in Ohio will also close its doors at the end of this semester, stranding for a second time students who transferred there from Alderson Broaddus University in West Virginia, which shut down just days before classes were scheduled to begin last year.

Seven out of 10 students at colleges that have closed got little or no warning. Of those, a smaller proportion were likely to continue their educations than students at colleges that gave more notice and ended operations in an “orderly” way, the SHEEO study found.

Tatiana Hicks was at her laptop preparing for her final exams in the nursing program she attended at for-profit Stratford University in Virginia when her group chat with fellow students started to blow up. “The only thing that was going through my mind was studying for finals, but my phone would not stop ringing,” said Hicks, who was going to school while working 12-hour shifts three days a week as a nurse assistant in a hospital to pay for it.

An email had just gone out saying Stratford had lost its accreditation and was closing, effective immediately. Students had a month to get their transcripts, it said. But within a day, the university’s phones and email were shut down, said Hicks, now 27, who lives in Gainesville, Va.

“I started panicking. I cried. I cried for hours that day,” said Hicks, who lost all of the 94 credits she had earned and owed $30,000 in student loans, though they would later be forgiven after more than a year of red tape.

“I thought, this just proved I shouldn’t have gone to college in the first place,” she said.

Hicks eventually enrolled in a new program, beginning again from scratch on her way to a degree in respiratory therapy.

More common is the experience of Misha Zhuykov, who ended his formal education when Burlington College in Vermont shut down during his junior year there.

“There was always this ramshackle feeling” at Burlington, he said. “I thought, ‘Just hold out for another two years and I’m out of here.’”

Instead, Zhuykov and the last 100 or so other undergraduates were given less than two weeks’ notice that the college would be closing. He said he found that not all of his credits would be accepted if he transferred.

Like many of his classmates, Zhuykov never took his formal education any further. He now works as a graphic designer in New Hampshire. “A lot of folks just kind of dropped off. They were banking on that degree. I have a friend who’s working at a gas station.”

Even those who graduated from colleges that later closed run into uncomfortable questions. Laila Ali, who was in the last group of students to graduate from Newbury College, started a new job in December, but her employer couldn’t verify her education. “I didn’t really know what route to take. Who do I contact?” The employer ultimately accepted the physical degree that she was handed when she walked at graduation.

It triggered unwelcome memories.

“I remember graduation and my last semester being gloomy,” said Ali, now 27 and living in Atlanta. She said Newbury’s closing came as a surprise. “They could have given us a warning.”

How much difference a warning can make was evident at Presentation College in South Dakota, which — before announcing that it would close — contracted with the nonprofit College Possible to help its 384 remaining students continue their educations.

Ninety percent of those last students either graduated before the college closed its doors for good or transferred to another institution, said Catherine Marciano, College Possible’s vice president for partnerships — a far higher proportion than at closed colleges elsewhere.

That kind of an experience is an exception to the rule, however. “Some colleges literally padlock the door, and that’s their announcement,” said Paula Langteau, the last president of Presentation, who now works as a consultant to help other colleges through the process — a sign of how frequently it’s happening.

Mergers are also picking up, though they almost always end with the struggling partner fading away. Woodbury University is being merged into the University of Redlands, and St. Augustine College in Chicago into Lewis University. The Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences was absorbed by St. Joseph’s University in January. Salus University will become part of Drexel University in June and stop running as a separate institution next year. Bluffton University in Ohio will be integrated into the University of Findlay, also next year.

New rules from the federal Education Department take effect in July that will require institutions to report if they are entering bankruptcy or facing expensive legal judgments, and to set aside reserves to cover the cost of student loans if they go under.

It’s also growing more important that consumers understand the financial status of colleges they consider, said Stocker, of College Viability.

“If a restaurant has health complaints, we don’t want to go there,” said Stocker. “If a car manufacturer is having trouble, why would we want to buy that car? Same thing for colleges.”

This story about college closings was produced by the Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Additional reporting by Sara Hutchinson. Sign up for its higher education newsletter . Listen to its higher education podcast .

• International

April 24, 2024 - US university protests

By Adrienne Vogt, Christina Zdanowicz, Elise Hammond, Samantha Delouya, Chandelis Duster, Tori B. Powell, Emma Tucker, Elizabeth Wolfe and Kathleen Magramo, CNN

Our live coverage of the protests has moved here

Nearly 100 people arrested at USC, police say

From CNN's Elizabeth Wolfe and Josh Campbell

The Los Angeles Police Department said 93 people were arrested on suspicion of trespassing during Wednesday's demonstrations at the University of Southern California.

"The university is a private campus and the group had been violating some of their orders. It was a trespass at that point and we assisted with the arrests," Los Angeles Police Captain Kelly Muniz said during a briefing .

One person was also arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, Muniz said. She did not provide further details.

No protesters or officers have been reported injured, police said.

Some context: USC's Department of Public Safety ordered protesters gathering at the campus' Alumni Park Wednesday afternoon to disperse or face arrest for trespassing.

At one point during the demonstrations, tensions escalated as protesters refused to relocate and remove their tents and other prohibited items, a university official said.

The university closed its campus Wednesday evening as LAPD began arresting demonstrators.

Negotiations at Columbia University unstable, organizers say

From CNN's Kathleen Magramo

Negotiations between protesters and Columbia University officials about clearing the encampment on its lawn that had been extended for 48 hours have been “unstable," said Esha Karam, managing director of Columbia Daily Spectator, citing student organizers.

"We're about halfway through that extended deadline of 48 hours and we heard from organizers on the student front earlier today in a press conference who told us that the negotiations are ongoing so unstable at the moment," Karam told CNN.

There's still around another 24 hours to go until the extended deadline "but really after that, we don't really know where things are going,” Karam added.

House Speaker Mike Johnson called Wednesday for the resignation of the university’s president if she can't "bring order to this chaos."

Student reactions to calls for the college president's resignation have been mixed, Karam said. 

She said there are “some who are willing to see her continue to lead and continue to work with her.” 

Cal Poly Humboldt campus to remain closed through weekend as protesters occupy buildings 

From CNN’s Cindy Von Quednow

The California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt campus will remain closed through the weekend as protesters, including "unidentified non-students," continue to occupy two buildings, school officials said in an  update .

Work and classes will remain remote, and officials are considering keeping the campus closed for longer.

“There are unidentified non-students with unknown intentions, in Siemens Hall,” the officials said. “This creates an unpredictable environment. In addition, all entrances to the building are barricaded, creating a fire hazard. Adding to health and safety concerns, many toilets are no longer working.”

Other buildings on the campus in Arcata are at risk of being occupied, and protesters “have shown a willingness” to lock themselves in facilities and steal equipment, the officials said.

“Campus officials are communicating with protestors and continuing to encourage them to leave as soon as possible.”

Graffiti described as “hateful” has been painted on campus, the officials said.

“The University condemns in the strongest terms all forms of hatred, bigotry, and violence. Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, hatred, and bigotry in all forms have no place at Cal Poly Humboldt.”

The university "supports free speech through open dialogue that is respectful and constructive," the officials said.

"That does not include behavior that involves destroying and damaging property, and disrupting students, faculty, and staff from learning, teaching, and working. Everyone deserves to be in an environment where everyone can feel safe, included, and respected.”

Fox 7 photographer among those arrested at University of Texas at Austin

From CNN’s Joe Sutton

A photographer was among those arrested during clashes between protesters and law enforcement on the University of Texas at Austin campus on Wednesday. 

Fox 7 reported that their photographer was detained and arrested. The station did not identify the employee. 

In an evening  update , the Texas Department of Public Safety said that 34 arrests had been made by law enforcement on the campus as of 9 p.m. 

CNN has contacted Texas DPS, UT Austin Police, and UT Austin for information on this arrest.

Columbia University Board of Trustees voices support for embattled president

From CNN's Rob Frehse

The Columbia University Board of Trustees released a statement Wednesday saying they strongly support President Minouche Shafik, who has faced calls for her resignation amid intense pressure to rein in days-long protests.

“The Columbia University Board of Trustees strongly supports President Shafik as she steers the university through this extraordinarily challenging time,” the board said in a  statement Wednesday . “During the search process for this role, President Shafik told us that she would always take a thoughtful approach to resolving conflict, balancing the disparate voices that make up a vibrant campus like Columbia’s, while taking a firm stance against hatred, harassment and discrimination.” “That's exactly what she's doing now,” the trustees added.

 The board said it is "urgently working" with Shafik to resolve the unrest on campus and "rebuild the bonds of our community."

UT Austin Police give "all clear" for dispersal order as authorities arrest more than 30 protesters

The University of Texas at Austin Police Department said in a statement on X Wednesday evening that "the dispersal order at the South Mall has ended. All University rules are still in effect."

As of 9 p.m. CT, 34 arrests have been made by law enforcement on the UT Austin campus, according to an X post from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Muslim Public Affairs Council condemns calls for National Guard to be deployed against protesters 

Amid arrests of pro-Palestine protesters across universities, the Muslim Public Affairs Council condemned calls for the deployment of the National Guard , saying the “crackdown on students with an overwhelming militaristic force has set a dangerous precedent for university administrations nationwide.” 

“The Muslim Public Affairs Council calls on the people of conscience, including faculty and leaders, to oppose threats to deploy the National Guard on the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University, whose aim is to push back against the university’s continued financial investment in corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine,” the council said in a statement Wednesday.  

MPAC urged for a reevaluation of strategies used to handle protests on campuses across the country and says it advocates for “approaches that emphasize de-escalation and address students’ concerns through constructive means rather than force and intimidation.” 

In a previous statement on Tuesday , MPAC accused the White House of having double standards for issuing a response condemning violence and physical intimidation against Jewish students at Columbia University, but says the administration “consistently fails to extend the same sentiments to students who face repeated violence, intimidation, doxing, and harassment for their pro-Palestinian advocacy.” 

LAPD arrest about 50 protesters at USC

From CNN's Stephanie Becker and Nick Watt

The Los Angeles Police Department arrested approximately 50 protestors at the University of Southern California after campus police gave a dispersal order to demonstrators, according to a CNN crew at the scene.

Campus police announced earlier that anyone who stayed in the area would be subject to criminal trespass laws.

Video from the scene showed protestors not resisting arrest as LAPD handcuffed them with zip ties and escorted them away from the ongoing protest.

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A look at the protests about the war in Gaza that have emerged on US college campuses

Atlanta police and Georgia state troopers dismantled a camp on Emory University’s quadrangle Thursday morning, with Associated Press journalists counting at least 17 people detained. (AP video by Sharon Johnson)

The Los Angeles Police Department said more than 90 people were arrested Wednesday during a day of Gaza War protests at the University of Southern California.

Students at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have set up a tent encampment as student protests over the Israel-Hamas war have popped up on an increasing number of U.S. college campuses (AP Video:Teresa Crawford)

Pro-Israeli demonstrators gathered at Columbia University in New York on Friday, rallying for the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

Student protests over the Israel-Hamas war have popped up on an increasing number of college campuses across the U.S., including tent encampments at Northwestern University, University of California and University of Pennsylvania.

Pro-Palestinian demonstration encampment is seen at the Columbia University, Friday, April 26, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

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A student protester stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of Harvard College, draped in the Palestinian flag, at an encampment of students protesting against the war in Gaza, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Qais Dana stands by the statue of Ben Franklin during a pro-Palestinian protest on College Green in the heart of the University of Pennsylvania campus in the in Philadelphia on Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Elizabeth Robertson/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

Students gather for a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas, Thursday April 25, 2024, in Austin. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

Protesters gather on the lawn during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the University of Texas, in Austin, late Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

People pray during the “Solidarity Jummah” outside the Columbia University, Friday, April 26, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Pro-Israel demonstrators chant during the “Bring Them Home Now” rally outside the Columbia University , Friday, April 26, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

George Washington University police close a student encampment as students demonstrate during a pro-Palestinian protest over the Israel-Hamas war on Friday, April 26, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Israel supporters show up at George Washington University where students protest, during a pro-Palestinian protest over the Israel-Hamas war, Friday, April 26, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

People play music and cheer as a 10:00 p.m. curfew hits the University of Texas at Austin during a protest against the war in Gaza, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Austin, Texas. (Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via AP)

Students protesting against the war in Gaza, and passersby walking through Harvard Yard, are seen at an encampment at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

A passer-by, right, walks through an encampment of tents, Thursday, April 25, 2024, on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus, in Cambridge, Mass. Students at MIT set up the encampment of tents on the campus to protest what they said was MIT’s failure to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and to cut ties to Israel’s military. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Authorities detain a protester on the campus of Emory University during a pro-Palestinian demonstration, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Protesters are cuffed after being detained on the campus of Emory University during a pro-Palestinian demonstration Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

George Washington University students set tents in the campus during a pro-Palestinians protests over the Israel-Gaza War, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

A makeshift camp with a Pro-Palestinian theme is staged on the UCLA campus, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A sign calling attention to the conflict in Gaza rests against a tent, Thursday, April 25, 2024, at an encampment of tents on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus, in Cambridge, Mass. Students at MIT set up the encampment of tents on the campus to protest what they said was MIT’s failure to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and to cut ties to Israel’s military. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Protesters pray at an encampment staged to support the Palestinian cause on the UCLA campus Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Student protests over the Israel-Hamas war have popped up on an increasing number of college campuses following last week’s arrest of more than 100 demonstrators at Columbia University.

The students are calling for universities to separate themselves from any companies that are advancing Israel’s military efforts in Gaza — and in some cases from Israel itself.

Protests on many campuses have been orchestrated by coalitions of student groups . The groups largely act independently, though students say they’re inspired by peers at other universities.

A look at protests on campuses in recent days:

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Pro-Palestinian student protesters set up a tent encampment at the Ivy League university in New York last week. Police first tried to clear the encampment on April 18, when they arrested more than 100 protesters . But the move backfired, inspiring students across the country and motivating protesters at Columbia to regroup.

Earlier this week, the Ivy League school, where Monday is set to be the last day of classes, switched to hybrid learning. Commencement is set for May 15.

Students said Friday afternoon that they had reached an impasse with administrators and intended to continue their encampment until their demands are met. Columbia officials had earlier said that negotiations were showing progress. Despite dozens of journalists on campus and scores of police officers outside the gates, an unassuming spring day unfolded Friday with students sitting on the library’s steps or grabbing a quick bite while soon-to-be-graduates posed for photos in their powder-blue gowns.

Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik , faced a significant — but largely symbolic — rebuke from faculty Friday but retains the support of trustees, who have the power to hire or fire the president. A report by the university senate’s executive committee, which represents faculty, found Shafik and her administration took “many actions and decisions that have harmed Columbia University,” including calling in police. Following the report, the senate passed a resolution that included a task force to monitor how the administration would make changes going forward.

Hundreds of counterprotesters gathered on the streets outside Columbia on Friday morning, many holding Israeli flags and chanting for the hostages being held by Hamas and other militants to be released.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

The University of Southern California canceled its main stage graduation ceremony set for May 10 after its campus was roiled by protests. The university already canceled a commencement speech by the school’s pro-Palestinian valedictorian, citing safety concerns. The Los Angeles Police Department said more than 90 people were arrested Wednesday night on charges of trespassing during a protest at the university. One person was arrested on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon. There were no reports of injuries. The university said Wednesday that it had closed campus and police would arrest people who did not leave. Friday was the last day of classes.

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Police clashed with protesters at Ohio State University in Columbus, just hours after they gathered Thursday evening. Those who refused to leave after warnings were arrested and charged with criminal trespass, said university spokesperson Benjamin Johnson, citing rules barring overnight events. Of 36 people arrested, Johnson said Friday that 16 were students and 20 were not affiliated with the university. The school’s commencement is set for May 5.

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

About 50 students at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., set up a tent encampment on the school’s University Yard on Thursday. Later in the day, a group of Georgetown University students and professors staged their own protest walkout and marched to the George Washington campus to join them. The protesters are demanding that the university divest from Israel and lift a suspension against a prominent pro-Palestinian student group.

The university’s last day of classes before final exams is set for Monday and commencement is scheduled for May 19. Because of the noise generated by the protests, the university said it would move law school finals to another building from the one where they had originally been scheduled.

The university said the protesters must remove tents and disperse by 7 p.m.

CALIFORNIA STATE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY, HUMBOLDT

University officials extended the closure of the campus until May 10 — the end of the semester — saying instruction would continue to be remote, after protesters at the university in northern California used furniture, tents, chains and zip ties to block entrances to an academic and administrative building on Monday. Commencement is scheduled for May 11.

Officials said in a statement Tuesday that students had occupied a second building and three students had been arrested. On Wednesday, officials said some unidentified people who were not students were also inside one of the occupied buildings. On Thursday, the university said protesters continued to occupy the two buildings.

A dean at the school, Jeff Crane, suggested during the meeting that the university form a committee that would include students to do a deep dive into the school’s investments. Crane also suggested faculty and students continue meeting every 24 hours to keep an open line of communication. The sides have yet to announce an agreement.

The school’s senate of faculty and staff demanded the university’s president resign in a no-confidence vote Thursday, citing the decision to call police in to remove the barricaded students Monday.

On Friday, the university released a statement responding to questions from those occupying the buildings. The statement said there will be consequences for actions that violate policy or law, but officials would take into account actions by any students who choose to evacuate the occupied buildings and support efforts to clear them. It did not say the charges faced by those arrested would be dropped.

The administration also offered protesters a 5 p.m. deadline to leave and “not be immediately arrested.” But that deadline passed and the university did not immediately respond to a message seeking an update or provide information on what they planned to do next.

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

An encampment set up by students at NYU swelled to hundreds of protesters earlier this week. Police on Wednesday said that 133 protesters had been taken into custody. They said all were released with summonses to appear in court on disorderly conduct charges. Commencement is set for May 15.

EMORY UNIVERSITY

At Emory University in Atlanta, where Atlanta police and Georgia state troopers had dismantled a camp on the school’s quadrangle, the school president on Friday said in an email that some of the videos of a clash between police and people on the campus “are shocking” and that he is “horrified that members of our community had to experience and witness such interactions.”

School officials said 20 of the 28 people arrested were “Emory community members.”

Video circulated widely on social media shows two women who identified themselves as professors being detained, with one of them slammed to the ground by one officer as a second officer then pushes her chest and face onto a concrete sidewalk. In a separate incident Thursday evening, some protesters pinned police officers against the glass doors of the Candler School of Theology on the campus and threw objects at the officers, Emory’s president said.

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Northwestern University changed its student code of conduct Thursday morning to bar tents on its suburban Chicago campus as student activists set up an encampment.

University President Michael Schill issued an email saying the university had enacted an “interim addendum” to its student code to bar tents, among other things, and warned of disciplinary actions including suspension, expulsion and criminal charges.

“The goal of this addendum is to balance the right to peacefully demonstrate with our goal to protect our community, to avoid disruptions to instruction and to ensure university operations can continue unabated,” Schilling said.

The university’s commencement is scheduled for June 9.

FASHION INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

A few dozen protesters set up tents and occupied a building Thursday at the Fashion Institute of Technology, part of the public State University of New York system. Protesters sat on the floor or milled around, many wearing face masks and kaffiyehs. Other protesters outside the building held signs and Palestinian flags. They refused to speak to a reporter. Around a dozen protesters spent the night in tents and sleeping bags inside a campus building. The institute’s museum, which is located in the building where the demonstrators set up camp, was closed Friday.

The school’s commencement was still scheduled for May 22 and May 23.

INDIANA UNIVERSITY BLOOMINGTON

After an encampment was set up at Indiana University Bloomington, police with shields and batons shoved into a line of protesters linked arm-in-arm Thursday afternoon. Videos posted to social media appear to show the protest continuing after law enforcement stopped making arrests.

In an update Friday, the university police said 34 people were arrested. Public information officer Hannah Skibba said charges include trespassing, resisting law enforcement and battery on a public safety official. One officer sustained “minor injuries.” Protests continued Friday, one day before the last day of classes. The university’s commencement is scheduled for May 4.

Jeffrey Kehr, chief deputy prosecutor for Monroe County, said in an email that those arrested were released on their own recognizance and the office will “examine all the reports we receive and any relevant footage to determine what, if any, charges are appropriate.”

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

A small but growing protest encampment remained in place early Friday on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. A statement issued by the school said officials were “closely monitoring” the encampment, which had started on Thursday, and had not received any reports of threatening or violent behavior by the protesters. However, they warned that protests or speech that violates the university’s policies, disrupts its business, or causes an “intimidating, hostile, or violent environment” would not be tolerated. The school’s commencement is scheduled to take place between May 18 and 20.

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

In Gainesville, Florida, home to the University of Florida, protesters were warned Friday that students could face suspension and banishment for three years, and employees could be fired, if they violated rules including camping, using bullhorns, protesting inside buildings or possessing weapons. Around 50 people have been protesting on campus since Wednesday.

Earlier this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis directed the state’s universities to make it easier for out-of-state students facing antisemitism and other religious harassment in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war to transfer to Florida campuses.

The Republican governor’s administration last fall also ordered state universities to ban a pro-Palestinian student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, from campuses, saying it illegally backs Hamas militants who attacked Israel. The group has challenged that decision in federal court.

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

Protesters at Arizona State University pitched tents, including some that police dismantled, and at least three people were arrested Friday. A television news report put the number of protesters in the dozens and video showed people waving flags and holding signs reading “Free Palestine.”

University and Tempe city police representatives did not immediately answer emails asking about arrests, injuries or the size of the crowd.

A university spokesperson, Elena Bras, issued a statement that said “unapproved encampments” were prohibited on campus, and failure to comply would be grounds for arrest for trespassing.

Inside the Week That Shook Columbia University

In a Washington war room, Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, decided to call police officers to arrest protesting students. The backlash now threatens her leadership.

After the police cleared tents on Thursday, students rebuilt the encampment and made it bigger. Credit... C.S. Muncy for The New York Times

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By Nicholas Fandos and Sharon Otterman

• April 23, 2024

Just after 2 p.m. last Wednesday, Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, stepped out of an office building on Capitol Hill and into an idling black SUV.

She had just endured an intense grilling by a congressional committee investigating antisemitism on elite college campuses. Now, a fresh challenge was rapidly building back on her own turf, where pro-Palestinian student demonstrators had staked out an encampment dominating Columbia’s lawn.

For a university trying to reassure Congress that it was getting its campus under control, the timing could scarcely have been worse. With a narrow window to act, Dr. Shafik directed her car to a law firm near the White House, where she set up a makeshift command center.

The secretive deliberations that followed over 24 frantic hours have sent Columbia into a crisis over free speech and safety unlike any the campus has seen since 1968. The events also set off a chain reaction rattling campuses across the country, just as one of the most trying academic years in memory neared its end.

In theory, Dr. Shafik had a range of options to deal with the protests and protect Jewish students; in the moment, though, she saw little choice, according to three people who described the private discussions. Her testimony had pointed toward coming down hard on the protesters.

Despite brief attempts to negotiate with them and objections from key leaders on campus, Dr. Shafik ordered what she later conceded was an “extraordinary step.” She suspended the students and ordered New York City police in riot gear to arrest more than 100 activists who refused to leave on Thursday afternoon.

But instead of quelling the protests, Dr. Shafik’s decision appeared to backfire. By this week, she was besieged on all sides.

Students protesters were unbowed, and soon the encampment had regrown to be even larger than before. Dr. Shafik’s own faculty threatened to revolt over an “unprecedented assault on student rights.” At least one major Jewish donor cut off support . And while the White House voiced deep concern, the very Republican lawmakers she had set out to appeal to called for her resignation.

“It’s the most significant test Columbia has confronted since its recovery from ’68,” said Robert A. McCaughey, a longtime university professor who has written a history of Columbia, suggesting there were real questions whether Dr. Shafik, an Egyptian-born economist, could outlast it.

If the conflict was handled badly, he added, it could also contribute to a growing “crisis of confidence” in universities as engines of social progress that prepare future generations to confront the world’s most pressing challenges.

Columbia declined a request to interview Dr. Shafik.

But in a statement, a university spokeswoman said the president had remained in “constant touch” while she was in Washington, including on calls that lasted until midnight. The spokeswoman, Samantha Slater, also said Dr. Shafik was now focused on “de-escalating the rancor” on campus.

Student demonstrations for the Palestinian cause have become a constant feature of select college campuses since the Israel-Hamas war broke out. Many activists, including some Jewish students who support the movement, say they are fighting to preserve human life in Gaza, where local health officials say more than 30,000 people have died, and to end Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

But demonstrations from the left have also included, at times, antisemitic hate speech, threats and outright support for Hamas. In recent days, nonstudent protesters gathered outside Columbia’s gates have used especially vitriolic rhetoric that has left some Jewish students feeling unsafe .

Now, with only days of classes left in the spring semester, neither side appears to have a clear endgame. On Tuesday night, the university issued a deadline for student protesters to dismantle their encampment, only to extend it as negotiations between the administration and students seemed to be making progress . University leaders are counting the days until summer, hoping to protect May’s commencement ceremonies from disruption.

Columbia faces one of the most complex balancing acts between protecting students on campus and respecting its deeply cherished commitment to academic freedom. The university is home to large Jewish and Arab student populations, and boasts a leading Middle Eastern studies department, a dual degree program with Tel Aviv University and a rich history of student activism dating back to the 1960s.

Dr. Shafik, an international finance expert with few prior connections to Columbia, has conceded the university was unprepared for the outpouring that followed Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. She had been ceremonially inaugurated just days before. But as the protests escalated, and the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania lost their jobs after botching their own appearances before Congress in December, she slowly began clamping down.

In the fall, the university suspended two student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, whose rolling protests repeatedly violated its policies. This month, it suspended students who it said had been involved in an event called “Resistance 101,” where speakers openly praised Hamas.

By the time she was called to testify before the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Work Force this month, it looked as though Dr. Shafik might avoid the fate of the other Ivy League presidents targeted by Congress.

Columbia spent months preparing for the hearing. Shailagh Murray, a former adviser to President Barack Obama who oversees the university’s public affairs office, recruited a large team of lawyers, old political hands and antisemitism experts to prep Dr. Shafik. It included Dana Remus, President Biden’s former White House counsel; Risa Heller, a crisis communications guru; former Republican congressional aides; and Philippe Reines, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton.

Many team members gathered in the Washington offices of the law firm, Covington & Burling, beginning the Saturday before the hearing for mock testimony.

Dr. Shafik was determined not to make the same mistakes as her Ivy League counterparts, according to the people familiar with her preparation. Where their testimony came off as haughty and convoluted, she wanted to project humility and competence.

The university handed the committee thousands of pages of documents, including sensitive records that almost never become public. They showed that Columbia had suspended more than 15 students and removed five professors from the classroom, including at least three facing accusations that they had made Jewish students feel unsafe.

Though her testimony on the disciplinary cases made supporters of academic freedom furious , the approach appeared to work inside the hearing room. Dr. Shafik defended free speech rights, but said universities “cannot and should not tolerate abuse of this privilege.”

Grudging Republicans largely accepted the answers.

“Columbia beats Harvard and U Penn,” Representative Aaron Bean, Republican of Florida, teased from the dais.

But as Dr. Shafik slowly dispatched one potential crisis, student organizers were carrying out a plan to escalate their own pressure on the university.

In the predawn hours before Dr. Shafik’s scheduled testimony on Wednesday, dozens of students poured out of dorms and apartments into a grassy quad outside Columbia’s main library and pitched tents. When campus awoke, a sign posted on the lawn announced the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” openly defying rules governing demonstrations.

Columbia administrators issued their first warning to participants to disperse at 9:30 a.m., just as Dr. Shafik was preparing to take the witness stand. But by the time she got back to Covington’s glass-walled offices to turn her prep room into a war room, the students had not budged.

“The genocide in Gaza is too unbearable for us to continue to allow our university to ignore every single democratic attempt that we have tried,” said Maryam Alwan, an undergraduate who helped organize the demonstration.

Organizers said they held hours of discussions with a senior university vice president to see if the two sides could find an off-ramp. The students were demanding the university divest from any financial interests enriching Israel and grant amnesty for all activists under investigation for protest actions, among other demands.

To some observers, though, it looked as if both sides were more interested in proving a point than de-escalating.

“You had hard-heads on both ends who wanted a confrontation,” said Dr. James Applegate, a professor of astronomy and member of the University Senate’s executive committee. “They got what they wanted.”

Dr. Shafik, meanwhile, began a series of calls with university deans, some of whom worried the university was proceeding without proper contingency plans. Around 5 p.m. on Wednesday, she formally notified the University Senate of her intention to call in the Police Department. Its executive committee replied with explicit disapproval, Dr. Applegate said.

The decision was destined to be fraught. The city’s police officers have rarely been welcomed on campus since the 1968 protests, when they helped violently remove students occupying university buildings at the height of the antiwar movement.

But Dr. Shafik was adamant that the rules be enforced. The police warned her the encampment would only get harder to root out the longer it lasted. And, with Congress and the Biden administration scrutinizing how Columbia was handling antisemitic threats, she had legal concerns about failing to act. She began making arrangements for the police to arrive the next day.

“I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger,” she wrote to the Police Department the next day.

On Wednesday evening, Dr. Shafik did not head back to New York to be on hand when the police arrived, however. She decided to keep a longstanding plan to attend a private dinner in Washington for the Bezos Earth Fund, according to a university spokeswoman. Dr. Shafik ended up fielding so many calls that she never had time to eat, she said.

Back on campus, just before the university’s final deadline to disperse passed that night, students in the encampment gathered for a meeting. Closing their eyes for a secret ballot, they were asked for a show of hands if anyone wanted to disband rather than face repercussions.

No one raised a hand, according to a student organizer who counted the votes.

Stephanie Saul and Maria Cramer contributed reporting.

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a Washington, D.C., law firm where the president of Columbia held meetings. It is Covington & Burling not Covington & Burlington.

How we handle corrections

Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government. More about Nicholas Fandos

Sharon Otterman is a Times reporter covering higher education, public health and other issues facing New York City. More about Sharon Otterman

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Middle East crisis — explained

The conflict between Israel and Palestinians — and other groups in the Middle East — goes back decades. These stories provide context for current developments and the history that led up to them.

Mass arrests roil college campuses amid pro-Palestinian protests

Rachel Treisman

Ayana Archie

Georgia State Patrol officers detain a demonstrator on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta during a pro-Palestinian demonstration on Thursday. Mike Stewart/AP hide caption

Georgia State Patrol officers detain a demonstrator on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta during a pro-Palestinian demonstration on Thursday.

Mass arrests, outrage and turmoil rippled across U.S. college campuses as authorities clamped down on a growing number of pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Students at Emory University , Northwestern University , Cornell University , George Washington University , Princeton University and the City College of New York set up solidarity encampments on Thursday morning, the latest to join a fast-growing list of prestigious institutions.

Students are calling for an end both to the Israel-Hamas war and their universities' investment in companies that profit from it or, more broadly, do business with Israel.

Dozens of protesters have been arrested since Wednesday night, including at the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin and Emerson College.

As more arrests were made at Emory University and Princeton University on Thursday morning, some charges were being dismissed against detainees elsewhere.

Columbia to continue talks with student protesters after deadline to clear out passes

In Texas, Travis County Attorney Delia Garza told member station KUT that charges have been dismissed against 46 of the protesters arrested at UT Austin on Wednesday, and that her office is reviewing more cases.

"Legal concerns were raised by defense counsel, we reviewed each case individually and agreed there were deficiencies in the probable cause affidavits," she said.

Here are other developments as of Thursday:

USC's main commencement ceremony is canceled

Protesters at the University of Southern California push and shove university police officers as tempers get heated during a pro-Palestinian occupation on the campus on Wednesday in Los Angeles. Richard Vogel/AP hide caption

Protesters at the University of Southern California push and shove university police officers as tempers get heated during a pro-Palestinian occupation on the campus on Wednesday in Los Angeles.

The University of Southern California said Thursday that it was canceling its mainstage commencement ceremony.

Other graduation activities will still happen, including commencements from individuals schools.

"We understand that this is disappointing; however, we are adding many new activities and celebrations to make this commencement academically meaningful, memorable, and uniquely USC," the university said in a statement .

Thursday's announcement came after dozens of arrests Wednesday evening.

The Los Angeles Police Department said it showed up at about 4 p.m. Pacific Time, and had arrested 93 people by 10 p.m. for trespassing, a misdemeanor offense. One arrest was made for assault with a deadly weapon, though the department did not say what the weapon was. No injuries were reported.

The protests follow the school's decision last week to cancel the commencement speech for valedictorian Asna Tabassum, who posted pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel content on her social media. USC said it scrapped the speech for safety reasons.

Authorities arrest activists gathering at Emory University

A couple dozen protesters were detained at an encampment on Emory University's Atlanta campus just hours after it was set up, the school said in a statement.

Activists launched the encampment to demand divestment from Israel as well as " Cop City ," the nickname given to the controversial police and fire department training center under construction in a nearby forest, member station WABE reported .

Two protesters detailed the coalition's motivations in an op-ed published Thursday in the Middle Eastern-focused news site Mondoweiss, writing that "we are students across multiple Atlanta universities and community members" demanding divestment "at all Atlanta colleges and universities." Social media posts suggest that activists explicitly encouraged "non-students" to participate.

An account belonging to the activist movement "Stop Cop City" posted on X (formerly Twitter) that within two hours of the encampment being set up on Thursday morning, Emory officials had issued a "final warning" to protesters.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators shut down airport highways and bridges in major cities

A university spokesperson told NPR in a statement that "several dozen protesters trespassed" onto campus and set up tents on the quad, describing them as "not members of our community" but "activists attempting to disrupt our university as our students finish classes and prepare for finals."

A statement from the Atlanta Police Department said officers were "met with violence" while trying to secure the campus.

Social media posts, including from the Emory Wheel , and local media reports show law enforcement officers using handcuffs, tasers , tear gas and pepper balls on people in the crowd. The police department confirmed using chemical irritants, but says it did not use rubber bullets.

Witnesses reported seeing people detained and loaded into police vans.

Protesters arrested at Princeton sit-in

Nearly 100 undergraduate and graduate students at Princeton attended a sit-in in a campus courtyard on Thursday morning, with some setting up tents despite the university's warnings.

Protesters called on the university to — among other demands — divest from companies that profit from or engage in Israel's war effort and refrain from associating with Israeli academic institutions and businesses, according to The Daily Princetonian .

Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber had warned in an op-ed that the school's free expression policy includes a "clear and explicit prohibition upon encampments."

And Vice President for Campus Life Rochelle Calhoun wrote in an email to undergraduates Wednesday that any student participating in an "encampment, occupation, or other unlawful disruptive conduct who refuses to stop after a warning will be arrested and immediately barred from campus."

A Princeton spokesperson told NPR that a "small number" of participants began erecting "about a half-dozen tents."

"After repeated warnings from the Department of Public Safety to cease the activity and leave the area, two graduate students were arrested for trespassing," the spokesperson said, adding that the students have been barred from campus pending a disciplinary process.

Protesters voluntarily took down the remaining tents, the spokesperson added.

Boston police broke up an Emerson College encampment

Boston police move to arrest pro-Palestinian supporters who were blocking the road after the clearing of Emerson College's encampment early Thursday morning. Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Boston police move to arrest pro-Palestinian supporters who were blocking the road after the clearing of Emerson College's encampment early Thursday morning.

Boston police tore down a pro-Palestinian encampment at Emerson College in the early morning hours, clashing with protesters and ultimately taking more than 100 into custody.

Emerson College students had been camping since Sunday night in Boston's Boylston Place Alley.

President Jay Bernhardt warned earlier this week that the alley is not solely owned by the college and has a "public right-of-way requirement to access non-Emerson buildings, including the State Transportation Center, and is a fire alley that is under the jurisdiction of the Boston Police Department."

Emerson sophomore Kyle Graff described the arrests to NBC Boston .

"The big vans, they came in, they parked right in front of this alleyway and the cops came up and they started arresting students, forcing their way into the encampment and everything, pushing students to the ground," Graff said. "I saw one student get shoved into the pavement and their hands forced to be put behind them."

NBC Boston reports that police cleared the alley within 30 minutes.

Columbia University shifts classes to remote-only after a wave of protests on campus

Boston Police Department spokesperson Sgt. John Boyle told local media that 108 people were arrested and are expected to be arraigned in Boston Municipal Court. He said four police officers were injured, one seriously.

Similar encampments have been set up at several other Boston-area schools, including MIT and Tufts. Harvard students set up tents in Harvard Yard — which is temporarily closed to the public — on Wednesday.

Texas state troopers responded to protests in riot gear

Texas State Troopers on horseback work to disperse pro-Palestinian students protesting the Israel-Hamas war on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin on Wednesday. Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Texas State Troopers on horseback work to disperse pro-Palestinian students protesting the Israel-Hamas war on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin on Wednesday.

At the University of Texas at Austin, hundreds of people protested in support of Palestinians. University officers and Texas state troopers responded to the scene in riot gear, and arrested dozens of students who did not leave, according to NPR member station KUT.

"These protesters belong in jail. Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott posted on X . "Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled,"

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UT Austin President Jay Hartzell commended the school and law enforcement for showing "extraordinary restraint," and said the organizers of the protest intended to violate school policies. "The group that led this protest stated it was going to violate Institutional Rules," Hartzell said. "Our rules matter, and they will be enforced."

Pro-Palestinian protests are spreading across the country

Students at Cornell University and George Washington University set up solidarity encampments on Thursday morning.

Columbia University has twice extended its deadline — originally midnight on Tuesday — for students to clear their campus encampment.

Book News & Features

Pen america cancels awards ceremony after writers protest.

Officials first delayed the deadline until Wednesday morning, and said later in the day that they would continue conversations for another 48 hours in light of "constructive dialogue" with student representatives.

They said student protesters had committed to removing "a significant number of tents," clearing non-Columbia protesters from the area, complying with fire department requirements and prohibiting harassing and discriminatory language.

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• University of Texas-Austin
• columbia university
• Israel Palestine

Columbia says encampments will scale down; scores of protesters arrested at USC: Updates

Editor's Note: This page is a summary of news on the college campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war for Wednesday, April 24. For the latest news on the protests view our live updates file for Thursday, April 25 .

NEW YORK − Columbia University announced Wednesday that students had agreed to scale down their encampment as protesters across the nation pressed their demands for an end to the civilian casualties in Gaza that have tested the American public's historically ironclad support for Israel.

Meanwhile, police arrested protesters Wednesday at the University of Southern California campus, which closed to the public Wednesday amid clashes between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and authorities at the school and nationwide .

Arrests were actively being made on the USC campus Wednesday night, a Los Angeles police spokesperson told USA TODAY. The spokesperson said he could not provide an estimate on how many people were detained.

Columbia student protesters earlier in the day issued a statement saying the school had made a "a written commitment and concession not to call the NYPD or the National Guard," calling the progress "an important victory for students.”

The university closed the main campus due to the "significant activity on campus," USC's Department of Public Safety said in an alert to students. Everyone on the campus could still leave but students were required to enter through pedestrian gates using their school IDs.

Rallies and encampments have sprung up on campuses from California to Massachusetts this week, sometimes prompting police intervention, as was the case Wednesday at the University of Texas in Austin and at the University of Southern California. The protesters are calling for an end to U.S. military support for Israel and for eliminating Israeli investments.

The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization, called on political leaders and university officials to stop “endangering” Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian and other students who conducting peaceful protests. "Students should not have to risk their reputation, livelihoods or their safety to speak out against a genocide or their university’s complicity in genocide," CAIR-NY’s Executive Director Afaf Nasher said in a statement.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed a controversial aid package bill that provides billions of dollars for the Israeli military. Lawmakers who supported the aid have been among targets of the protesters. In Brooklyn, police made arrests for disorderly conduct late Tuesday during a street protest near the residence of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader.

Developments:

∎ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the largely pro-Palestinian protests at U.S. campuses, calling them "horrific'' and saying, "Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities.''

∎ Hamas also put out a statement about the demonstrations, as Izzat Al-Risheq, a member of the militant group's Political Bureau, said the Biden administration is "violating the individual rights and the right to expression through arresting university students and faculty members'' who are protesting.

∎ At the University of Minnesota campus in St. Paul, police made nine arrests and cleared an encampment after the school asked them to take action, citing violations of university policy and trespassing law.

∎ In the Boston area, encampments have been erected at multiple schools including Tufts University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Emerson College.

∎ California's Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata will be closed Wednesday after pro-Palestinian protesters occupied a campus building, the school announced .

Protests in New York flare: US campuses brace for more unrest over Gaza war

Protesters met by police at UT Austin, USC

At least 20 people were arrested after a large number of law enforcement officers in riot gear descended upon the University of Texas' Austin campus Wednesday and broke up a peaceful antiwar protest, the Austin American-Statesman reported . At least nine of those arrested were handcuffed and loaded into police vehicles.

Officers wearing helmets, some of them on horseback, ordered the demonstrators to disperse after they had been marching for about 45 minutes, the newspaper said. The crowd spread out but then gathered again, leading to the detainments.

The protest, which featured chants of "Free Palestine,'' was organized by a student group in solidarity with demonstrations in other college campuses demanding schools sever ties with corporations linked to the Israeli military and for the U.S. to stop funding Israel's war effort.

In Los Angeles, the University of Southern California closed off its campus Wednesday after police clashed with protesters trying to set up an encampment at the school's Alumni Park.

"There is still significant activity at the center of the UPC campus due to a demonstration,'' USC said in a social media posting around 12:20 p.m. PT. "The gates are closed, so anyone coming to campus should be prepared to show an ID at the gates for class or for business.'' 

House Speaker Johnson booed at Columbia speech

House Speaker Mike Johnson called for Columbia University President Minouche Shafik to resign during his visit to the school Wednesday. In his remarks, Johnson shamed students and faculty involved in the protests, as well as administrators for not doing enough to prevent them.  

“It's detestable. As Columbia has allowed these lawless agitators and radicals to take over, the virus of antisemitism has spread across other campus,” Johnson said. “Anti-Israel encampments are popping up in universities all across this country. The madness has to stop.” 

When Johnson described instances of antisemitism, called for Shafik’s resignation, and said students perpetrating violence should be arrested, protesters nearby booed and chanted, “We can’t hear you.” 

“Enjoy your free speech,” he told them in response. 

-- Rachel Barber  

Pro-Palestinian protesters urge universities to divest from Israel. What does that mean?

Columbia students say they have won some concessions

Columbia student protest organizers said Wednesday the university has conceded to some demands but is still putting students at risk of attacks. The statement − issued in response to the university’s campus update on progress in negotiations with student organizers − referenced historic actions of American universities against student demonstrators at Jackson State and Kent State, where authorities fatally shot several students more than 50 years ago.

“Columbia’s reliance on the threat of state violence against peaceful protesters has created an unstable ground for the negotiations process which will continue over the next 48 hours,” the statement said, referring to the deadline the university has issued. “However, Columbia’s written commitment and concession not to call the NYPD or the National Guard signifies an important victory for students.”

Biden signs off on $17 billion in aid for Israel

Biden signed a controversial aid package bill Wednesday that provides, among other things, $17 billion for Israel. The bill also supplies $9 billion for humanitarian aid, some of it for Palestinians in Gaza, but that's a little over half the amount assigned for military aid to Israel. Such funding has been a driving force for the encampments and other protests at universities and elsewhere in the U.S.

In comments at the White House, Biden focused on the humanitarian aid and the threat Israel faces from Iran.

"My commitment to Israel ... is ironclad," he said, adding that more than $1 billion in aid is for Palestinians facing a humanitarian crisis because of "the war Hamas started."

"Israel must make sure all this aid reaches the Palestinians in Gaza without delay," Biden said.

Columbia students agree to remove some tents, university says

At Columbia, student protesters gathered on campus early Wednesday for another day of demonstrations while just outside the gates protesters were chanting in support of the students. Earlier, the school issued a statement saying protesters had agreed to remove a "significant" number of tents, would allow only students to take part in the encampment, would follow city fire safety rules and would "make the encampment welcome to all and (prohibit) discriminatory or harassing language."

"In light of this constructive dialogue, the University will continue conversations for the next 48 hours," the statement said.

Lead student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student who is Palestinian, disputed that an agreement was in place. "We are doing our best to work with the university to actually meet our demands, because this encampment is for specific demands,” he told USA TODAY. “If it takes 48 hours, takes more than that, the students are here to stay until their demands are met.”

Before the school issued the statement, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine said administrators threatened to bring in police and the National Guard if protesters did not comply with their demands. "We remain steadfast in our convictions and will not be intimidated by the University's disturbing threat of an escalation of violence," the group said in a statement.

Harvard students start their own tent city

Harvard students set up a ring of tents in Harvard Yard midday Wednesday and said they plan to stay put until the school’s administration responds to their demands to divest from funds that support Israel’s military. Students sang and danced in a circle in front of the statue of John Harvard, the school’s namesake, draped with a keffiyeh (scarf), as dozens of others looked on.

“We resist the fact that our tuition money is going toward bankrolling Israel’s genocide,” said Violet Barron, a sophomore from Los Angeles and member of the Harvard Out of Occupied Palestinian Coalition.

She said the school’s administration has consistently suppressed student support for Palestinians and now, after more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, the students decided to take more public action. “We tried countless times to go through institutional channels,” Barron said.

A sophomore majoring in social studies, Barron said her own activism is both a reflection of what she’s learning in her history classes as well as her Jewish upbringing, which taught her to try to “repair the world.”

− Karen Weintraub

Author Lis Harris defends students impacted by a 'nasty situation'

Longtime author and critic Lis Harris, a Columbia writing professor, defended the students' right to form the encampment she called a "tent city,'' and said police should not have taken it down and arrested protesters last week.

“I mean, how could the young people not feel as they do? It’s a nasty situation,” said Harris, who authored the 2019 book, “ In Jerusalem: Three Generations of an Israeli Family and a Palestinian Family .”

The book examines the impacts of the intractable Israelis-Palestinian conflict, which have been felt for decades and are particularly acute now.

“When you read about history happening by the leaders, that’s one thing,” she said. “It’s quite another to see the effect of all this violence and fear on the generations that keep coming and going.”

Brown students protest despite threat of disciplinary action

Students at Brown University in Rhode Island established an encampment Wednesday. Large signs announcing "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" and "Brown invests in the Palestinian genocide" were prominently displayed.

The encampment was set up hours after Provost Francis Doyle sent an email to all students warning that encampments are a violation of university police and and that participants could face disciplinary action "up to and including separation from the institution,” The Brown Daily Herald reported. University Spokesperson Brian Clark told The Herald protest becomes unacceptable when it violates safety policies or interferes with "regular operations of the university."

“We have been troubled by reports of violence, harassment and intimidation at some encampments on other campuses, but we have not seen that kind of behavior at Brown," Clark said. "Any such behavior would not be tolerated.”

Scores arrested in Brooklyn protests

In Brooklyn, police made scores of disorderly conduct arrests when a street protest reached a standoff Tuesday night. The protesters, organized by the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace, had gathered at Grand Army Plaza, near the home of Schumer, who has led the effort in Congress to provide funds for the Israeli military. The protesters conducted a Seder dinner and demanded a cease-fire in Gaza.

By nightfall, demonstrators sat in the street and led protest chants against Israel and U.S. foreign aid to the country. Police began pulling dozens of people, young and old, off the roadway. Officers handcuffed them with zip ties and loaded them on several buses that lined the street.

"We refuse to let our traditions be used to starve, displace, and massacre Palestinians," the Jewish Voice for Peace said in a tweet during the protest. "Taking seriously the mandate of the Jewish holiday of liberation requires us to show up with everything we have on the doorsteps of those still arming and funding these historic atrocities."

The New York Police Department said officers arrested 208 demonstrators who blocked traffic at Grand Army Plaza.

Contributing: Reuters