One of the questions I get asked all the time is, "How many hours do uni students actually spend at uni?"
Contrary to popular belief, students do regularly appear on campus! Yep, it's true. Just how often you will appear on campus depends on your degree. To help you out, I asked some of my friends to tell me how many hours a week they spend here!
Adam is in his third year of Civil Engineering. He reckons he spends about 20 hours a week in classes. In his first two years, this was more like 25-30 hours.
Amber has just finished her Medical Science degree. She had over 25 hours a week in lectures and tutorials, each semester. This was at the very least!
Cindy, a Commerce student, has about 10-15 hours of classes in a week. But - she is quick to tell me - she also has a LOT of reading and homework to do outside of class time!
Then there's Bernadette, who does Visual Arts. She has anything from 5 to 15 hours of classes. But she's expected to be complete 'studio time,' outside these hours, during which she works on her practical projects.
Tarah is an Arts/Law student and spends about 12-16 hours a week in lectures and tutorials.
Prue is in her second year of Veterinary Science and tells me that studying is like having a full-time job, for her. She says she has at least 30 hours of classes each week.
As a general rule, Science-based subjects will have more contact hours than will Humanities-based degrees. This is because Science-based degrees often have lab sessions, or other practical components. Humanities-based students are more likely to do the bulk of their work outside the classroom, which is why they have fewer contact hours.
Comments
what about social work students? i probably expect not as much compared to science and engineering students but i'm still interested.
Posted by: annie | December 26, 2005 02:39 PM
thanks for the post but i still want to know how many hours do social work students do at usyd?
is it the same as arts and commerce students? do you still have to do alot of work at home in that course?
Posted by: annie | December 30, 2005 03:21 PM
Hi Annie!
So sorry for not getting back to your comments earlier...too many Christmas spirits!
While I don't do a Social Work degree, and I don't know anyone who does, most humanities based degrees can expect to have less contact hours than science-based degrees, as a general rule. So you can probably expect a similar workload to that of Arts or Commerce students. Keep in mind that Social Work students do have to do some work experience, though, which will add to your workload.
Because your face-to-face hours at uni are less, there is a lot of work to do at home. I have found that I'm expected to do around 6-9 hours of reading a week, for example. Then there is research for essays, writing, editing and other such fun-filled things!
Thanks, Annie!
Posted by: Lauren | January 2, 2006 07:23 PM
Just another word about Social Work - in the first year, it is very similar to an Arts degree - so about 12 hours. During your 3rd and 4th years, you will do a great deal of practicum, so you could be doing practical experience 9-5, Mon-Fri (but you won't have classes when you are on prac). So it varies a lot depending on the stage of the course.
Posted by: Katy | January 13, 2006 10:27 AM
I know a bit late. Currently doing 4th year social work. We doing a placement which is 9-5, monday to friday and then every second week we do about 4 hours of class time.
So about 42 hours a week for 4 months in 3rd year and 5 months in 4th year. Hope this helps.
Posted by: Sam | July 23, 2007 11:04 AM