TY  - JOUR
AU  - Babcock,Philip S.
AU  - Marks,Mindy
TI  - The Falling Time Cost of College: Evidence from Half a Century of Time Use Data
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15954
PY  - 2010
Y2  - April 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15954
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15954.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Philip S. Babcock
Department of Economics
2036 North Hall
University of California, Santa Barbara
Mail Code 9210
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Tel: 805/893-4823
Fax: 805/893-8830
E-Mail: babcock@econ.ucsb.edu

Mindy Marks
UC, Riverside
4110 Sproul Hall
Riverside, CA 92521
E-Mail: mmarks@ucr.edu
AB  - Using multiple datasets from different time periods, we document declines in academic time investment by full-time college students in the United States between 1961 and 2003. Full-time students allocated 40 hours per week toward class and studying in 1961, whereas by 2003 they were investing about 27 hours per week. Declines were extremely broad-based, and are not easily accounted for by framing effects, work or major choices, or compositional changes in students or schools. We conclude that there have been substantial changes over time in the quantity or manner of human capital production on college campuses.
ER  -