how many hours should you spend on homework

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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 • Jul 16, 2024 at 3:27 pm

didnt realy help

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.

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More than two hours of homework may be counterproductive, research suggests.

A Stanford education researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.   "Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good," wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .   The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students' views on homework.   Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.   Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.   "The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students' advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being," Pope wrote.   Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.   Their study found that too much homework is associated with:   • Greater stress : 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.   • Reductions in health : In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.   • Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits : Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were "not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills," according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.   A balancing act   The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.   Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as "pointless" or "mindless" in order to keep their grades up.   "This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points," said Pope, who is also a co-founder of Challenge Success , a nonprofit organization affiliated with the GSE that conducts research and works with schools and parents to improve students' educational experiences..   Pope said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.   "Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development," wrote Pope.   High-performing paradox   In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. "Young people are spending more time alone," they wrote, "which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities."   Student perspectives   The researchers say that while their open-ended or "self-reporting" methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for "typical adolescent complaining" – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.   The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Clifton B. Parker is a writer at the Stanford News Service .

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What’s the Right Amount of Homework?

Decades of research show that homework has some benefits, especially for students in middle and high school—but there are risks to assigning too much.

Many teachers and parents believe that homework helps students build study skills and review concepts learned in class. Others see homework as disruptive and unnecessary, leading to burnout and turning kids off to school. Decades of research show that the issue is more nuanced and complex than most people think: Homework is beneficial, but only to a degree. Students in high school gain the most, while younger kids benefit much less.

The National PTA and the National Education Association support the “ 10-minute homework guideline ”—a nightly 10 minutes of homework per grade level. But many teachers and parents are quick to point out that what matters is the quality of the homework assigned and how well it meets students’ needs, not the amount of time spent on it.

The guideline doesn’t account for students who may need to spend more—or less—time on assignments. In class, teachers can make adjustments to support struggling students, but at home, an assignment that takes one student 30 minutes to complete may take another twice as much time—often for reasons beyond their control. And homework can widen the achievement gap, putting students from low-income households and students with learning disabilities at a disadvantage.

However, the 10-minute guideline is useful in setting a limit: When kids spend too much time on homework, there are real consequences to consider.

Small Benefits for Elementary Students

As young children begin school, the focus should be on cultivating a love of learning, and assigning too much homework can undermine that goal. And young students often don’t have the study skills to benefit fully from homework, so it may be a poor use of time (Cooper, 1989 ; Cooper et al., 2006 ; Marzano & Pickering, 2007 ). A more effective activity may be nightly reading, especially if parents are involved. The benefits of reading are clear: If students aren’t proficient readers by the end of third grade, they’re less likely to succeed academically and graduate from high school (Fiester, 2013 ).

For second-grade teacher Jacqueline Fiorentino, the minor benefits of homework did not outweigh the potential drawback of turning young children against school at an early age, so she experimented with dropping mandatory homework. “Something surprising happened: They started doing more work at home,” Fiorentino writes . “This inspiring group of 8-year-olds used their newfound free time to explore subjects and topics of interest to them.” She encouraged her students to read at home and offered optional homework to extend classroom lessons and help them review material.

Moderate Benefits for Middle School Students

As students mature and develop the study skills necessary to delve deeply into a topic—and to retain what they learn—they also benefit more from homework. Nightly assignments can help prepare them for scholarly work, and research shows that homework can have moderate benefits for middle school students (Cooper et al., 2006 ). Recent research also shows that online math homework, which can be designed to adapt to students’ levels of understanding, can significantly boost test scores (Roschelle et al., 2016 ).

There are risks to assigning too much, however: A 2015 study found that when middle school students were assigned more than 90 to 100 minutes of daily homework, their math and science test scores began to decline (Fernández-Alonso, Suárez-Álvarez, & Muñiz, 2015 ). Crossing that upper limit can drain student motivation and focus. The researchers recommend that “homework should present a certain level of challenge or difficulty, without being so challenging that it discourages effort.” Teachers should avoid low-effort, repetitive assignments, and assign homework “with the aim of instilling work habits and promoting autonomous, self-directed learning.”

In other words, it’s the quality of homework that matters, not the quantity. Brian Sztabnik, a veteran middle and high school English teacher, suggests that teachers take a step back and ask themselves these five questions :

• How long will it take to complete?
• Have all learners been considered?
• Will an assignment encourage future success?
• Will an assignment place material in a context the classroom cannot?
• Does an assignment offer support when a teacher is not there?

More Benefits for High School Students, but Risks as Well

By the time they reach high school, students should be well on their way to becoming independent learners, so homework does provide a boost to learning at this age, as long as it isn’t overwhelming (Cooper et al., 2006 ; Marzano & Pickering, 2007 ). When students spend too much time on homework—more than two hours each night—it takes up valuable time to rest and spend time with family and friends. A 2013 study found that high school students can experience serious mental and physical health problems, from higher stress levels to sleep deprivation, when assigned too much homework (Galloway, Conner, & Pope, 2013 ).

Homework in high school should always relate to the lesson and be doable without any assistance, and feedback should be clear and explicit.

Teachers should also keep in mind that not all students have equal opportunities to finish their homework at home, so incomplete homework may not be a true reflection of their learning—it may be more a result of issues they face outside of school. They may be hindered by issues such as lack of a quiet space at home, resources such as a computer or broadband connectivity, or parental support (OECD, 2014 ). In such cases, giving low homework scores may be unfair.

Since the quantities of time discussed here are totals, teachers in middle and high school should be aware of how much homework other teachers are assigning. It may seem reasonable to assign 30 minutes of daily homework, but across six subjects, that’s three hours—far above a reasonable amount even for a high school senior. Psychologist Maurice Elias sees this as a common mistake: Individual teachers create homework policies that in aggregate can overwhelm students. He suggests that teachers work together to develop a school-wide homework policy and make it a key topic of back-to-school night and the first parent-teacher conferences of the school year.

Parents Play a Key Role

Homework can be a powerful tool to help parents become more involved in their child’s learning (Walker et al., 2004 ). It can provide insights into a child’s strengths and interests, and can also encourage conversations about a child’s life at school. If a parent has positive attitudes toward homework, their children are more likely to share those same values, promoting academic success.

But it’s also possible for parents to be overbearing, putting too much emphasis on test scores or grades, which can be disruptive for children (Madjar, Shklar, & Moshe, 2015 ). Parents should avoid being overly intrusive or controlling—students report feeling less motivated to learn when they don’t have enough space and autonomy to do their homework (Orkin, May, & Wolf, 2017 ; Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008 ; Silinskas & Kikas, 2017 ). So while homework can encourage parents to be more involved with their kids, it’s important to not make it a source of conflict.

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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How much time should you spend studying? Our ‘Goldilocks Day’ tool helps find the best balance of good grades and  well-being

Senior Research Fellow, Allied Health & Human Performance, University of South Australia

Professor of Health Sciences, University of South Australia

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Dot Dumuid is supported by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Early Career Fellowship GNT1162166 and by the Centre of Research Excellence in Driving Global Investment in Adolescent Health funded by NHMRC GNT1171981.

Tim Olds receives funding from the NHMRC and the ARC.

University of South Australia provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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For students, as for all of us, life is a matter of balance, trade-offs and compromise. Studying for hours on end is unlikely to lead to best academic results. And it could have negative impacts on young people’s physical, mental and social well-being.

Our recent study found the best way for young people to spend their time was different for mental health than for physical health, and even more different for school-related outcomes. Students needed to spend more time sitting for best cognitive and academic performance, but physical activity trumped sitting time for best physical health. For best mental health, longer sleep time was most important.

It’s like a game of rock, paper, scissors with time use. So, what is the sweet spot, or as Goldilocks put it, the “just right” amount of study?

Read more: Back to school: how to help your teen get enough sleep

Using our study data for Australian children aged 11 and 12, we are developing a time-optimisation tool that allows the user to define their own mental, physical and cognitive health priorities. Once the priorities are set, the tool provides real-time updates on what the user’s estimated “Goldilocks day” looks like.

More study improves grades, but not as much as you think

Over 30 years of research shows that students doing more homework get better grades. However, extra study doesn’t make as much difference as people think. An American study found the average grades of high school boys increased by only about 1.5 percentage points for every extra hour of homework per school night.

What these sorts of studies don’t consider is that the relationship between time spent doing homework and academic achievement is unlikely to be linear. A high school boy doing an extra ten hours of homework per school night is unlikely to improve his grades by 15 percentage points.

There is a simple explanation for this: doing an extra ten hours of homework after school would mean students couldn’t go to bed until the early hours of the morning. Even if they could manage this for one day, it would be unsustainable over a week, let alone a month. In any case, adequate sleep is probably critical for memory consolidation .

Read more: What's the point of homework?

As we all know, there are only 24 hours in a day. Students can’t devote more time to study without taking this time from other parts of their day. Excessive studying may become detrimental to learning ability when too much sleep time is lost.

Another US study found that, regardless of how long a student normally spent studying, sacrificing sleep to fit in more study led to learning problems on the following day. Among year 12s, cramming in an extra three hours of study almost doubled their academic problems. For example, students reported they “did not understand something taught in class” or “did poorly on a test, quiz or homework”.

Excessive study could also become unhelpful if it means students don’t have time to exercise. We know exercise is important for young people’s cognition , particularly their creative thinking, working memory and concentration.

On the one hand, then, more time spent studying is beneficial for grades. On the other hand, too much time spent studying is detrimental to grades.

We have to make trade-offs

Of course, how young people spend their time is not only important to their academic performance, but also to their health. Because what is the point of optimising school grades if it means compromising physical, mental and social well-being? And throwing everything at academic performance means other aspects of health will suffer.

US sleep researchers found the ideal amount of sleep for for 15-year-old boys’ mental health was 8 hours 45 minutes a night, but for the best school results it was one hour less.

Clearly, to find the “Goldilocks Zone” – the optimal balance of study, exercise and sleep – we need to think about more than just school grades and academic achievement.

Read more: 'It was the best five years of my life!' How sports programs are keeping disadvantaged teens at school

Looking for the Goldilocks Day

Based on our study findings , we realised the “Goldilocks Day” that was the best on average for all three domains of health (mental, physical and cognitive) would require compromises. Our optimisation algorithm estimated the Goldilocks Day with the best overall compromise for 11-to-12-year-olds. The breakdown was roughly:

10.5 hours of sleep

9.5 hours of sedentary behaviour (such as sitting to study, chill out, eat and watch TV)

2.5 hours of light physical activity (chores, shopping)

1.5 hours of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (sport, running).

We also recognised that people – or the same people at different times — have different priorities. Around exam time, academic performance may become someone’s highest priority. They may then wish to manage their time in a way that leads to better study results, but without completely neglecting their mental or physical health.

To better explore these trade-offs, we developed our time-use optimisation tool based on Australian data . Although only an early prototype, the tool shows there is no “one size fits all” solution to how young people should be spending their time. However, we can be confident the best solutions will involve a healthy balance across multiple daily activities.

Just like we talk about the benefits of a balanced diet, we should start talking about the benefits of balanced time use. The better equipped young people and those supporting them are to find their optimal daily balance of sleep, sedentary behaviours and physical activities, the better their learning outcomes will be, without compromising their health and well-being.

• Mental health
• Physical activity
• Children's mental health
• Children and sleep
• Children's well-being
• children's physical health
• Sleep research

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How Much Homework Is Enough? Depends Who You Ask

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Editor’s note: This is an adapted excerpt from You, Your Child, and School: Navigate Your Way to the Best Education ( Viking)—the latest book by author and speaker Sir Ken Robinson (co-authored with Lou Aronica), published in March. For years, Robinson has been known for his radical work on rekindling creativity and passion in schools, including three bestselling books (also with Aronica) on the topic. His TED Talk “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” holds the record for the most-viewed TED talk of all time, with more than 50 million views. While Robinson’s latest book is geared toward parents, it also offers educators a window into the kinds of education concerns parents have for their children, including on the quality and quantity of homework.

The amount of homework young people are given varies a lot from school to school and from grade to grade. In some schools and grades, children have no homework at all. In others, they may have 18 hours or more of homework every week. In the United States, the accepted guideline, which is supported by both the National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association, is the 10-minute rule: Children should have no more than 10 minutes of homework each day for each grade reached. In 1st grade, children should have 10 minutes of daily homework; in 2nd grade, 20 minutes; and so on to the 12th grade, when on average they should have 120 minutes of homework each day, which is about 10 hours a week. It doesn’t always work out that way.

In 2013, the University of Phoenix College of Education commissioned a survey of how much homework teachers typically give their students. From kindergarten to 5th grade, it was just under three hours per week; from 6th to 8th grade, it was 3.2 hours; and from 9th to 12th grade, it was 3.5 hours.

There are two points to note. First, these are the amounts given by individual teachers. To estimate the total time children are expected to spend on homework, you need to multiply these hours by the number of teachers they work with. High school students who work with five teachers in different curriculum areas may find themselves with 17.5 hours or more of homework a week, which is the equivalent of a part-time job. The other factor is that these are teachers’ estimates of the time that homework should take. The time that individual children spend on it will be more or less than that, according to their abilities and interests. One child may casually dash off a piece of homework in half the time that another will spend laboring through in a cold sweat.

Do students have more homework these days than previous generations? Given all the variables, it’s difficult to say. Some studies suggest they do. In 2007, a study from the National Center for Education Statistics found that, on average, high school students spent around seven hours a week on homework. A similar study in 1994 put the average at less than five hours a week. Mind you, I [Robinson] was in high school in England in the 1960s and spent a lot more time than that—though maybe that was to do with my own ability. One way of judging this is to look at how much homework your own children are given and compare it to what you had at the same age.

Many parents find it difficult to help their children with subjects they’ve not studied themselves for a long time, if at all.

There’s also much debate about the value of homework. Supporters argue that it benefits children, teachers, and parents in several ways:

• Children learn to deepen their understanding of specific content, to cover content at their own pace, to become more independent learners, to develop problem-solving and time-management skills, and to relate what they learn in school to outside activities.
• Teachers can see how well their students understand the lessons; evaluate students’ individual progress, strengths, and weaknesses; and cover more content in class.
• Parents can engage practically in their children’s education, see firsthand what their children are being taught in school, and understand more clearly how they’re getting on—what they find easy and what they struggle with in school.

Want to know more about Sir Ken Robinson? Check out our Q&A with him.

Q&A With Sir Ken Robinson

Ashley Norris is assistant dean at the University of Phoenix College of Education. Commenting on her university’s survey, she says, “Homework helps build confidence, responsibility, and problem-solving skills that can set students up for success in high school, college, and in the workplace.”

That may be so, but many parents find it difficult to help their children with subjects they’ve not studied themselves for a long time, if at all. Families have busy lives, and it can be hard for parents to find time to help with homework alongside everything else they have to cope with. Norris is convinced it’s worth the effort, especially, she says, because in many schools, the nature of homework is changing. One influence is the growing popularity of the so-called flipped classroom.

In the stereotypical classroom, the teacher spends time in class presenting material to the students. Their homework consists of assignments based on that material. In the flipped classroom, the teacher provides the students with presentational materials—videos, slides, lecture notes—which the students review at home and then bring questions and ideas to school where they work on them collaboratively with the teacher and other students. As Norris notes, in this approach, homework extends the boundaries of the classroom and reframes how time in school can be used more productively, allowing students to “collaborate on learning, learn from each other, maybe critique [each other’s work], and share those experiences.”

Even so, many parents and educators are increasingly concerned that homework, in whatever form it takes, is a bridge too far in the pressured lives of children and their families. It takes away from essential time for their children to relax and unwind after school, to play, to be young, and to be together as a family. On top of that, the benefits of homework are often asserted, but they’re not consistent, and they’re certainly not guaranteed.

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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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Homework: A New User's Guide

Cory Turner

If you made it past the headline, you're likely a student, concerned parent, teacher or, like me, a nerd nostalgist who enjoys basking in the distant glow of Homework Triumphs Past (second-grade report on Custer's Last Stand, nailed it!).

Whoever you are, you're surely hoping for some clarity in the loud, perennial debate over whether U.S. students are justifiably exhausted and nervous from too much homework — even though some international comparisons suggest they're sitting comfortably at the average.

Well, here goes. I've mapped out six, research-based polestars that should help guide you to some reasonable conclusions about homework.

How much homework do U.S. students get?

The best answer comes from something called the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP . In 2012, students in three different age groups — 9, 13 and 17 — were asked, "How much time did you spend on homework yesterday?" The vast majority of 9-year-olds (79 percent) and 13-year-olds (65 percent) and still a majority of 17-year-olds (53 percent) all reported doing an hour or less of homework the day before.

Another study from the National Center for Education Statistics found that high school students who reported doing homework outside of school did, on average, about seven hours a week.

If you're hungry for more data on this — and some perspective — check out this exhaustive report put together last year by researcher Tom Loveless at the Brookings Institution.

An hour or less a day? But we hear so many horror stories! Why?

The fact is, some students do have a ton of homework. In high school we see a kind of student divergence — between those who choose or find themselves tracked into less-rigorous coursework and those who enroll in honors classes or multiple Advanced Placement courses. And the latter students are getting a lot of homework. In that 2012 NAEP survey, 13 percent of 17-year-olds reported doing more than two hours of homework the previous night. That's not a lot of students, but they're clearly doing a lot of work.

Source: Met Life Survey of the American Teacher, The Homework Experience, 2007. LA Johnson/NPR hide caption

That also tracks with a famous survey from 2007 — from MetLife — that asked parents what they think of their kids' homework load. Sixty percent said it was just right. Twenty-five percent said their kids are getting too little. Just 15 percent of parents said their kids have too much homework.

Research also suggests that the students doing the most work have something else in common: income. "I think that the debate over homework in some ways is a social class issue," says Janine Bempechat, professor of human development at Wheelock College. "There's no question that in affluent communities, children are really over-taxed, over-burdened with homework."

But the vast majority of students do not seem to have inordinate workloads. And the ones who do are generally volunteering for the tough stuff. That doesn't make it easier, but it does make it a choice.

Do we know how much homework students in other countries are doing?

Sort of. Caveats abound here. Education systems and perceptions of what is and isn't homework can vary remarkably overseas. So any comparison is, to a degree, apples-to-oranges (or, at least, apples-to-pears). A 2012 report from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development pegged the U.S. homework load for 15-year-olds at around six hours per week. That's just above the study's average. It found that students in Hong Kong are also doing about six hours a week. Much of Europe checks in between four and five hours a week. In Japan, it's four hours. And Korea's near the bottom, at three hours.

Source: OECD, PISA 2012 Database, Table IV.3.48. LA Johnson/NPR hide caption

How much homework is too much?

Better yet, how much is just right? Harris Cooper at Duke University has done some of the best work on homework. He and his team reviewed dozens of studies, from 1987 to 2003, looking for consensus on what works and what doesn't. A common rule of thumb, he says, is what's called the 10-minute rule. Take the child's grade and multiply by 10. So first-graders should have roughly 10 minutes of homework a night, 40 minutes for fourth-graders, on up to two hours for seniors in high school. A lot of of schools use this. Even the National PTA officially endorses it.

Homework clearly improves student performance, right?

Not necessarily. It depends on the age of the child. Looking over the research, there's little to no evidence that homework improves student achievement in elementary school. Then again, the many experts I spoke with all said the same thing: The point of homework in those primary grades isn't entirely academic. It's about teaching things like time-management and self-direction.

But, by high school the evidence shifts. Harris Cooper's massive review found, in middle and high school, a positive correlation between homework and student achievement on unit tests. It seems to help. But more is not always better. Cooper points out that, depending on the subject and the age of the student, there is a law of diminishing returns. Again, he recommends the 10-minute rule.

What kinds of homework seem to be most effective?

This is where things get really interesting. Because homework should be about learning, right? To understand what kinds of homework best help kids learn, we really need to talk about memory and the brain.

Let's start with something called the spacing effect . Say a child has to do a vocabulary worksheet. The next week, it's a new worksheet with different words and so on. Well, research shows that the brain is better at remembering when we repeat with consistency, not when we study in long, isolated chunks of time. Do a little bit of vocabulary each night, repeating the same words night after night.

Similarly, a professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, Henry "Roddy" Roediger III , recommends that teachers give students plenty of little quizzes, which he says strengthen the brain's ability to remember. Don't fret. They can be low-stakes or no-stakes, says Roediger: It's the steady recall and repetition that matter. He also recommends, as homework, that students try testing themselves instead of simply re-reading the text or class notes.

There's also something known as interleaving . This is big in the debate over math homework. Many of us — myself included — learned math by focusing on one concept at a time, doing a worksheet to practice that concept, then moving on.

Well, there's evidence that students learn more when homework requires them to choose among multiple strategies — new and old — when solving problems. In other words, kids learn when they have to draw not just from what they learned in class that day but that week, that month, that year.

One last note: Experts agree that homework should generally be about reinforcing what students learned in class (this is especially true in math). Sometimes it can — and should — be used to introduce new material, but here's where so many horror stories begin.

Tom Loveless, a former teacher, offers this advice: "I don't think teachers should ever send brand-new material that puts the parent in the position of a teacher. That's a disaster. My own personal philosophy was: Homework is best if it's material that requires more practice but they've already received initial instruction."

Or, in the words of the National PTA: "Homework that cannot be done without help is not good homework."

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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Module 6: Learning Styles and Strategies

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

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

Class- 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 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 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 1:2 or 1:3. This 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 1:2 or 1:3 ratio is generally more appropriate for semester long courses of 18 weeks. More and more institutions of higher learning are moving away from semesters to terms ranging from 16 to 8 weeks long.

The recommended classroom 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 10 weeks, but then you start taking courses over an 8 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 1.5 credit hours but the rest of your courses are worth 1 credit hour each, you may need to put in more study hours for your 1.5 credit hour course. Finally, if you’re taking a course that only meets once a week like a writing workshop, you may consider putting in more study and reading time in between class meetings than the general 1:2 or 1:3 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, US 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 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 open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings. 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.

Now that you have considered ways to create a schedule, you can practice making one that will help you succeed academically. The California Community College’s Online Education site has a free source for populating a study schedule based on your individual course load.

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11 Surprising Homework Statistics, Facts & Data

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

Learn about our Editorial Process

The age-old question of whether homework is good or bad for students is unanswerable because there are so many “ it depends ” factors.

For example, it depends on the age of the child, the type of homework being assigned, and even the child’s needs.

There are also many conflicting reports on whether homework is good or bad. This is a topic that largely relies on data interpretation for the researcher to come to their conclusions.

To cut through some of the fog, below I’ve outlined some great homework statistics that can help us understand the effects of homework on children.

Homework Statistics List

1. 45% of parents think homework is too easy for their children.

A study by the Center for American Progress found that parents are almost twice as likely to believe their children’s homework is too easy than to disagree with that statement.

Here are the figures for math homework:

• 46% of parents think their child’s math homework is too easy.
• 25% of parents think their child’s math homework is not too easy.
• 29% of parents offered no opinion.

Here are the figures for language arts homework:

• 44% of parents think their child’s language arts homework is too easy.
• 28% of parents think their child’s language arts homework is not too easy.
• 28% of parents offered no opinion.

These findings are based on online surveys of 372 parents of school-aged children conducted in 2018.

2. 93% of Fourth Grade Children Worldwide are Assigned Homework

The prestigious worldwide math assessment Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) took a survey of worldwide homework trends in 2007. Their study concluded that 93% of fourth-grade children are regularly assigned homework, while just 7% never or rarely have homework assigned.

3. 17% of Teens Regularly Miss Homework due to Lack of High-Speed Internet Access

A 2018 Pew Research poll of 743 US teens found that 17%, or almost 2 in every 5 students, regularly struggled to complete homework because they didn’t have reliable access to the internet.

This figure rose to 25% of Black American teens and 24% of teens whose families have an income of less than $30,000 per year.

4. Parents Spend 6.7 Hours Per Week on their Children’s Homework

A 2018 study of 27,500 parents around the world found that the average amount of time parents spend on homework with their child is 6.7 hours per week. Furthermore, 25% of parents spend more than 7 hours per week on their child’s homework.

American parents spend slightly below average at 6.2 hours per week, while Indian parents spend 12 hours per week and Japanese parents spend 2.6 hours per week.

5. Students in High-Performing High Schools Spend on Average 3.1 Hours per night Doing Homework

A study by Galloway, Conner & Pope (2013) conducted a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California. 

Across these high-performing schools, students self-reported that they did 3.1 hours per night of homework.

Graduates from those schools also ended up going on to college 93% of the time.

6. One to Two Hours is the Optimal Duration for Homework

A 2012 peer-reviewed study in the High School Journal found that students who conducted between one and two hours achieved higher results in tests than any other group.

However, the authors were quick to highlight that this “t is an oversimplification of a much more complex problem.” I’m inclined to agree. The greater variable is likely the quality of the homework than time spent on it.

Nevertheless, one result was unequivocal: that some homework is better than none at all : “students who complete any amount of homework earn higher test scores than their peers who do not complete homework.”

7. 74% of Teens cite Homework as a Source of Stress

A study by the Better Sleep Council found that homework is a source of stress for 74% of students. Only school grades, at 75%, rated higher in the study.

That figure rises for girls, with 80% of girls citing homework as a source of stress.

Similarly, the study by Galloway, Conner & Pope (2013) found that 56% of students cite homework as a “primary stressor” in their lives.

8. US Teens Spend more than 15 Hours per Week on Homework

The same study by the Better Sleep Council also found that US teens spend over 2 hours per school night on homework, and overall this added up to over 15 hours per week.

Surprisingly, 4% of US teens say they do more than 6 hours of homework per night. That’s almost as much homework as there are hours in the school day.

The only activity that teens self-reported as doing more than homework was engaging in electronics, which included using phones, playing video games, and watching TV.

9. The 10-Minute Rule

The National Education Association (USA) endorses the concept of doing 10 minutes of homework per night per grade.

For example, if you are in 3rd grade, you should do 30 minutes of homework per night. If you are in 4th grade, you should do 40 minutes of homework per night.

However, this ‘rule’ appears not to be based in sound research. Nevertheless, it is true that homework benefits (no matter the quality of the homework) will likely wane after 2 hours (120 minutes) per night, which would be the NEA guidelines’ peak in grade 12.

10. 21.9% of Parents are Too Busy for their Children’s Homework

An online poll of nearly 300 parents found that 21.9% are too busy to review their children’s homework. On top of this, 31.6% of parents do not look at their children’s homework because their children do not want their help. For these parents, their children’s unwillingness to accept their support is a key source of frustration.

11. 46.5% of Parents find Homework too Hard

The same online poll of parents of children from grades 1 to 12 also found that many parents struggle to help their children with homework because parents find it confusing themselves. Unfortunately, the study did not ask the age of the students so more data is required here to get a full picture of the issue.

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Interpreting the Data

Unfortunately, homework is one of those topics that can be interpreted by different people pursuing differing agendas. All studies of homework have a wide range of variables, such as:

• What age were the children in the study?
• What was the homework they were assigned?
• What tools were available to them?
• What were the cultural attitudes to homework and how did they impact the study?
• Is the study replicable?

The more questions we ask about the data, the more we realize that it’s hard to come to firm conclusions about the pros and cons of homework .

Furthermore, questions about the opportunity cost of homework remain. Even if homework is good for children’s test scores, is it worthwhile if the children consequently do less exercise or experience more stress?

Thus, this ends up becoming a largely qualitative exercise. If parents and teachers zoom in on an individual child’s needs, they’ll be able to more effectively understand how much homework a child needs as well as the type of homework they should be assigned.

Related: Funny Homework Excuses

The debate over whether homework should be banned will not be resolved with these homework statistics. But, these facts and figures can help you to pursue a position in a school debate on the topic – and with that, I hope your debate goes well and you develop some great debating skills!

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Number Games for Kids (Free and Easy)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Word Games for Kids (Free and Easy)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Outdoor Games for Kids
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 50 Incentives to Give to Students

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How Much Time Should I Spend Studying in College?

Setting Aside Study Time Can Make It Easier to Manage a Busy Schedule

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There's no "right" way to study in college. Even students who have the same majors and take the same classes won't need to spend the same amount of time on coursework because everyone has their own way of learning. That being said, there's a common rule of thumb students and professors use to determine how much time to allocate for studying in college: For each hour you spend in class, you should spend two to three hours studying outside of class.

How Should I Study?

Of course, that "outside of class" studying can take on different forms: You might take the "traditional" approach to studying by sitting in your room, poring over a textbook or reading assignment. Or perhaps you'll spend time online or in the library further researching topics your professor mentioned in class. Maybe you'll have a lot of lab work to do or a group project that requires meeting other students after class.

The point is studying can take many forms. And, of course, some classes require students to work outside of class a lot more time than others. Focus more on what sort of studying will help you complete your necessary coursework and get the most out of your education, rather than trying to meet a specific study-hours quota.

Why Should I Track How Much I Study?

While prioritizing the quality over the quantity of your study time is more likely to help you accomplish your academic goals, it's smart to keep track of how much time you spend doing it. First of all, knowing how much time to spend studying in college can help you gauge if you're spending enough time on your academics. For example, if you're not performing well on exams or assignments — or you get negative feedback from a professor — you can reference the amount of time you've spent studying to determine the best way to proceed: You could try spending more time studying for that class to see if it improves your performance. Conversely, if you've already invested a lot of time in that course, perhaps your poor grades are an indication it's not an area of study that suits you.

Beyond that, tracking how you study can also help you with time management , a skill all college students need to develop. (It's pretty handy in the real world, too.) Ideally, understanding your out-of-class workload can help you avoid cramming for exams or pulling all-nighters to meet an assignment deadline. Those approaches are not only stressful, but they're often not very productive either.

The better you understand how much time it takes you to engage with and comprehend the course material, the more likely you are to reach your academic goals. Think of it this way: You've already invested a lot of time and money going to class, so you might as well figure out how much time you need to do everything necessary for getting that diploma.

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How Much Time Should Be Spent on Homework?

At the elementary level homework should be brief, at your child’s ability level and involve frequent, voluntary and high interest activities. Young students require high levels of feedback and/or supervision to help them complete assignments correctly. Accurate homework completion is influenced by your child’s ability, the difficulty of the task, and the amount of feedback your child receives. When assigning homework, your child’s teachers may struggle to create a balance at this age between ability, task difficulty and feedback. Unfortunately, there are no simple guiding principles.

We can assure you, however, that your input and feedback on a nightly basis is an essential component in helping your child benefit from the homework experience.

What is the recommended time in elementary school?

In first through third grade, students should receive one to three assignments per week, taking them no more than fifteen to twenty minutes. In fourth through sixth grade, students should receive two to four assignments per week, lasting between fifteen and forty-five minutes. At this age, the primarily goal of homework is to help your child develop the independent work and learning skills that will become critical in the higher grades. In the upper grades, the more time spent on homework the greater the achievement gains.

What is the recommended time in middle and high school?

For students in middle and high school grades there are greater overall benefits from time engaged in practicing and thinking about school work. These benefits do not appear to depend as much upon immediate supervision or feedback as they do for elementary students. In seventh through ninth grade we recommend students receive three to five sets of assignments per week, lasting between forty-five and seventy-five minutes per set. In high school students will receive four to five sets of homework per week, taking them between seventy-five and 150 minutes per set to complete.

As children progress through school, homework and the amount of time engaged in homework increases in importance. Due to the significance of homework at the older age levels, it is not surprising that there is more homework assigned. Furthermore, homework is always assigned in college preparatory classes and assigned at least three quarters of the time in special education and vocational training classes. Thus at any age, homework may indicate our academic expectations of children.

Regardless of the amount of homework assigned, many students unsuccessful or struggling in school spend less rather than more time engaged in homework. It is not surprising that students spending less time completing homework may eventually not achieve as consistently as those who complete their homework.

Does this mean that time devoted to homework is the key component necessary for achievement?

We are not completely certain. Some American educators have concluded that if students in America spent as much time doing homework as students in Asian countries they might perform academically as well. It is tempting to assume such a cause and effect relationship.

However, this relationship appears to be an overly simple conclusion. We know that homework is important as one of several influential factors in school success. However, other variables, including student ability, achievement, motivation and teaching quality influence the time students spend with homework tasks. Many students and their parents have told us they experience less difficulty being motivated and completing homework in classes in which they enjoyed the subject, the instruction, the assignments and the teachers.

The benefits from homework are the greatest for students completing the most homework and doing so correctly. Thus, students who devote time to homework are probably on a path to improved achievement. This path also includes higher quality instruction, greater achievement motivation and better skill levels.

Authors: Dr. Sam Goldstein and Dr. Sydney Zentall

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Make a difference in your state by volunteering to start a state affiliate to help individuals with learning disabilities in your state.

Contact LDA of America at [email protected] to inquire about starting a state affiliate.

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The Learning Disabilities Association of Louisiana (LDA-LA) is one of the state affiliates of the Learning Disabilities Association of America, as a nonprofit volunteer organization of parents, professionals, and adults with learning disabilities. Our mission is to create opportunities for success for all individuals affected by learning disabilities through support, education, and advocacy.

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How Much Time Should an Online Course Really Take?

June 9th, 2021 by JWU

Many college students look at online courses as an option to help them save money and time on schooling. While there are money and time savings with many online programs, it’s important that you do not underestimate how much time online training will take. You need to prepare for success, not struggle, by planning the right amount of time for your studies. Here is a closer look at some of the benefits of online education and the amount of time you should plan for your studies.

BENEFITS OF ONLINE EDUCATION

There are many reasons to consider  online degree programs  and courses for your college education. Some of these benefits include:

Greater Flexibility

Flexibility in when and where to study is one of the biggest reasons many students choose online courses or online degree programs. These programs can often fit in around work schedules when on-campus programs do not. This can allow a college student to pursue a degree even while working full-time. Online learning can also be a better option for students who have already started their families and need some scheduling flexibility.

Work at Your Pace

Sometimes, online courses allow you the ability to work at your own pace. You can pause a lecture video to really take in a concept, or you can jump into the next lecture or project as soon as you finish one. While you will still have deadlines at the end of the semester or term, you can often work at your own pace as long as you meet that deadline.

Save Some Money

Another benefit of online coursework is the ability to save some money. While the credit hours may be priced the same as on-campus credits at the same school, you can continue living at home and avoid the costs of commuting to campus. This can cut down on gas as well as room-and-board costs while you pursue your degree.

Attend School Far from Home

Online education provides the opportunity to earn a degree and take classes from a school that isn’t near your home. If you have a particular interest in a school that is far from where you live, you have the freedom to earn that degree without the need to relocate. This means access to higher-quality education for many students.

Learn New Tech Skills

Earning a degree or taking a class online may mean you will have to learn some new tech skills. Online students must become adept at using technology like video chatting and  online forums  to attend class and interact with students and professors. Those skills translate well into real-world applications after school as technology has become increasingly important in the modern world.

HOW LONG ARE ONLINE COURSES?

The goal of online education is to provide the same high-quality education as an on-campus program in a more flexible format. This means that the courses should not make material sacrifices—either in quality or quantity—in order to accommodate an online format. Thus, many online courses run the same length as their on-campus counterparts.

This means that a semester-based schedule will include approximately 15 weeks of work for 9 hours per week or 135 hours total for the semester for each 3-credit course. If the school follows a quarter-based approach, which has three school-year terms and a summer term, the same type of course would have the same 135 hours, but with 11 weeks of coursework. Thus, the student would spend approximately 12 hours a week on their course activities.

So, where does the flexibility come in? Online courses are supposed to be flexible, but this still sounds like a lot of time spent in the virtual classroom.

With online education, many programs are designed to let students log in and access coursework on their own schedules. Rather than having to be in class at 9 a.m. every Monday morning, students can log in to view course videos and other material when it works for them. While some programs have weekly deadlines for assignments and  discussion posts , for many programs, they can earn credit for the course as long as they are completing the full 135 hours by the end of the term.

HOW LONG ARE ONLINE DEGREE PROGRAMS?

Online degree programs take the same amount of time as in-class programs for most students. This means an associate degree will take approximately two years to complete, while a bachelor’s degree will take about four. If you take summer courses and a full course load each semester, you may be able to finish a bit more quickly, but these approximate lengths are fairly standard.

HOW MANY HOURS PER WEEK DO YOU NEED FOR ONLINE COURSES?

The 135 hours of coursework is typically relegated to actual time in the virtual classroom. In other words, this is the time you spend reading materials, interacting in online forums, or watching your instructor’s videos. This is not the amount of time you will spend on your homework and assignments.

According to US News & World Report, students report spending 15 to 20 hours a week on their coursework. However, this can vary depending on the workload. A better indicator of the amount of time it will take to complete the coursework is  six hours a week  for every credit hour. This estimate includes time to view course materials and time to work on assignments.

Several factors can impact how much time this takes. For example, a student who is taking coursework in an area that they have first-hand knowledge through work or other avenues will spend fewer hours of study time on their coursework than someone who is taking courses in an area they have no knowledge of. If a student has familiarity with a subject, that student will not need to study or research quite as hard as someone with no prior knowledge.

A student’s pace of doing coursework is another factor. Some students read, type, and work on lesson materials faster than others, and this impacts how much time it takes to finish the work. However, knowing these averages can help students plan the right number of hours to finish their coursework and avoid taking on too many credits at once.

BREAKING DOWN THE COURSEWORK

To better understand how much time an online class takes, consider a breakdown of what you will need to do each week. Typically, each 3-credit course will require you to spend three hours a week listening to or reading the actual coursework, similar to the three hours you would spend with in-person instruction in a traditional classroom. On top of that, you will need to spend about 3 hours per week reading for the class, which may be a physical textbook or an online text. You will also need to spend 4 to 5 hours on homework, papers, tests, and other assignments. This adds up to 7 to 8 hours a week on top of the classroom hours.

HOW TO ACCELERATE ONLINE LEARNING

Some students choose online learning in an attempt to complete the degree program faster. The self-paced nature of the program makes it seem like they can finish ahead of their peers who are not doing distance learning.

Sometimes it is possible to take an online class more quickly than the same class in a traditional classroom. This requires excellent time management skills because you will still need to spend the same number of hours studying as you would if you were in the classroom. The difference may be in fitting more study hours into each day. This only works if you do not have lectures to watch that are released on a particular calendar schedule.

Some online degree programs are called accelerated. They are constructed to cover course material more quickly without sacrificing the quality of the education. This requires a self-motivated learner, but it can allow you to complete a bachelor’s degree program in well under four years.

Finally, you can speed up your online learning by jumping into the next term as soon as you finish the first one without taking a long break between terms. If the programs do not have specific start dates, this can help you finish just a little more quickly.

Ultimately, accelerating an online learning program will depend on the options available at the school you choose. Talk to the admissions team about what you can do to earn your degree more quickly if time is important to you.

START YOUR ONLINE DEGREE TODAY

If you are interested in earning a degree fully online, JWU can help. With both graduate and undergraduate degree programs, we have the flexibility and online class format you need to succeed from home.

Learn about earning your  undergraduate degree  or  graduate degree  online from Johnson & Wales University. For more information, complete the  Request Info  form, call 855-JWU-1881 or email  [email protected] .

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How Many Hours Do Students Spend On Homework

Although the majority of college students want to achieve academic success, they are often unaware of the intricacies involved. One of the earliest and most crucial skills that  a student can learn is how to find and use excellent study time, but it’s not always easy. “How much time do you spend studying?” is the first question you will ask a student who is having difficulty in class. An excellent place to start is with time spent studying, even if it isn’t the sole one. We may go on to other aspects of education after examining time, such as how, where, what, and when Students learn. Let’s start with How Many Hours Do Students Spend On Homework.

Identifying how much time a student is spending on schooling might help them succeed if they are having difficulty.

 How many hours do students spend on homework?

•For high school students, the majority of learning takes place in the classroom, with homework serving as a supplement to classroom activities. Students at college, on the other hand, spend less time in the classroom and more time studying outside the Classroom.

•College students can anticipate spending more time on homework than they did in high school as a result of the change to an autonomous learning framework.

• For a college course worth three credits, this entails three hours of class time and six to nine hours of homework each week. However, this is based on educated estimations.

According to these figures, college students have far more homework than high school students, who typically have 10 hours of homework per week. College workloads might take as much time as working a full-time job. 

As a reminder, this is only an average of how much homework students should expect to do. Depending on the lecturer, there may be more or less homework for students to do. Students may also discover that some courses give relatively minimal homework at the beginning of the semester, but increase later on in the semester in preparation for examinations or when a significant project is due. Depending on the field of study, there may even be a difference in the amount of lab work or reading that is required.

Five methods for completing Homework more quickly.

1. make a list;.

Outline the homework you will do, each item on your list should be timed. Try completing a task in 5 or 10 minutes less. Keep your excitement in check. It is difficult to learn quick reading on your own.

2. Unplug the appliance.

 After every study session, make a list of the Internet resources you’ll need, then browse them all up at once.

3. Time Yourself;

4. make regular breaks..

Most individuals need a break after a long study session or in between classes. To stay energized, take breaks that include exercise. If you’re busy, taking a tech break might save you from missing something amazing, but they usually stay longer than expected. Take ten-minute pauses.

5. Reward yourself;

Conclusion:.

1. How many students have a hard time coping with their homework load?

Moreover, half of the students polled said schoolwork was their biggest cause of stress. Tests and the need to do well were the principal sources of anxiety for the remainder of the class. Moreover, half of the students said that homework was a major source of stress.

Teachers must feel anxious since they don’t know whether their pupils are grasping the subject. Students are expected to complete a large number of tasks to demonstrate mastery of the subject matter. It is the goal of teachers to ensure that their pupils thoroughly comprehend the material they are studying.

The Washington Post reports that a Challenge Success research from 2018 to 2020 found that on average, high school students spent 2.7 hours a week on homework.

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How much time should students spend doing homework?

When a teenager arrives home from school in the afternoon, the last thing he or she wants to worry about is homework. After all, there’s TV to be watched, friends to hang out with and maybe even a job to fulfill.

However, recent research from the University of Oviedo in Spain indicates homework needn’t take up an entire night. In fact, researchers found the perfect amount of time per day for homework was just one hour.

The study, which looked at more than 7,000 students living in Spain approximately 13 years old, found a positive correlation between the amount of homework a student completed and the level of the child’s understanding — and that optimal level was achieved in one hour.

But don’t get too excited too quickly.

Researchers say such results aren’t fully conclusive. The authors note that though they found a correlation between an hour of studying and the optimal level of learning, it doesn’t necessarily translate to better test results.

As a matter of fact, a variety of other studies indicate otherwise.

According to a 2012 article published in The Guardian , a study from the Department for Education in the UK found that children who put in two to three hours a night of homework were more likely to get better grades in school.

The study found that one of the main determinants of a student’s attitude toward homework came from the influence of the school. When students were expected to do thorough homework, they were likely to spend more time completing it.

“That’s one of the reasons Indian and Chinese children do better,” said Pam Sammons , an education professor at Oxford University. “They tend to put more time in. It’s to do with your effort as well as your ability.”

Sammons noted that homework doesn’t need to occupy an entire night, but there are benefits to spending a few extra minutes on assignments.

“What we’re not saying is that everyone should do large amounts,” said Sammons. “But if we could shift some of those who spend no time or half an hour into doing one to two hours.”

And perhaps you’ve heard the popular saying of “10 minutes per night per grade” coined by researcher Harris Cooper. Cooper recommends 10-20 minutes of homework per night beginning in first grade, then an additional 10 minutes added for each grade level after that.

But even though there may not be a one-size-fits-all recommendation, it is possible that too much studying can be detrimental. Just last year, research from Stanford University reported that high school students’ grades were negatively affected when they spent too much time with homework.“Any student who is doing more than three and a half hours of homework a night is actually at risk for higher stress levels and poor mental and physical health,” said Denise Pope , a senior lecturer in Stanford’s School of Education who participated in the study.

Grade point averages will be capped for the class of 2024-2025 at a 4.95. The first class to be affected by this change was the graduating class of 2024.

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Every summer seems to fly by, especially if you have school-aged children. How can you best prepare them for the challenges of a new school year?

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How Kids Should Spend the School Day, According to Experts

How long is a typical school day? How much time should kids spend attending school, doing homework, playing, and sleeping? Here’s what the experts recommend.

Attending Class

Doing homework, socializing with others, being with parents or caregivers, eating meals, being physically active, enjoying nature and the outdoors, using electronics, how to fit it all in.

Today's kids are busier than ever, dividing their time between school, activities , tutoring, and family time. When they're not busy with scheduled activities, kids must make time for homework, sleep , and personal care. And considering how long a typical school day is, it can be difficult to fit everything in.

Is there a way to balance it all and still provide some structure? Sure, making room for the priorities takes a little planning. Of course, flexibility is also important when it comes to time management. See how your child's schedule compares to others regarding key daily activities.

Parents / Sahara Borja

It may seem like your children spend all of their time at school. But while the average school day is just over six and a half hours long, there's a wide variance between the shortest and longest school days, contingent on individual state and district regulations.

The number of school days in a school year varies much less. According to the Pew Research Center, school days in different states range from 160 days in Colorado to 180 days in Hawaii.

This means kids are not in school for about 185 days or more a year, including weekends and breaks. On those days, kids can enjoy nature, spend time with family and friends, and exercise.

How Long Is a Typical School Day?

While state requirements for the amount of time school must be in session vary considerably from state to state, the typical school day for most kids in the United States is between six and seven hours. Depending on their age and where they live, students spend anywhere between three to seven hours a day in school, not counting transportation time or extracurricular activities.

How much time should kids spend on homework each day? A general rule among teachers is 10 minutes per grade level: 30 minutes per day for a third grader, 50 minutes for a fifth grader, and so on.

The time needed for homework really depends on the school's homework policy, the teacher's philosophy, and the type of coursework your child is taking. High school students taking AP courses might spend more time on homework than students in general education courses.

To keep your student on task during the school year, try establishing a schedule or block of time when homework will be completed.

Experts agree that school-age children need to have friends. Friends help children build social skills such as listening, sharing, and problem-solving. Through relationships with other children, children also learn how to handle their emotions.

Research doesn't dictate how much time children need to socialize with friends. What matters most is the quality of the friendships and whether or not the child is generally happy with their social time. Children or teens may have just a few friends or several friends.

Don't stress about spending quality time with your kids. Research from a large-scale longitudinal study on the effects of time with parents compared to child and teen outcomes had some surprising results.

The biggest takeaway is that time spent with a stressed-out and moody parent can decrease positive outcomes, while more time does not show a strong benefit. For this reason, it's important to be mindful of your family's moods.

It's also important not to put too much pressure on yourself when spending time as a family.

The amount of time a child needs to sleep varies according to their age. But every child, no matter their age, needs adequate sleep. Not getting enough sleep has been linked to falling asleep during school or missing school altogether.

What's more, kids who don't get enough sleep struggle to wake up in the mornings and have trouble learning or doing schoolwork. If you are concerned that your child is not getting enough sleep, learn what symptoms to watch for and what steps you can take to improve their sleep habits.

Most experts recommend 20 to 30 minutes to eat a meal and 10 to 15 minutes to eat a small snack. Keep in mind that even children's bodies need 20 minutes after eating before they begin to register feeling full.

Emphasize the importance of family meals to ensure your children have plenty of time to finish their food without feeling rushed and get adequate nutrition. This time gives your kids the nutrition they need and valuable time together as a family.

Moreover, regular family meals promote healthy eating and protect against childhood obesity. Ensure you select healthy options for your family and that electronics are turned off and away from the table.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), children should engage in 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day. Regular physical activity promotes health and fitness, lowers body fat, and strengthens bones.

Physical activity—which should consist of aerobic, muscle-strengthening, and bone-strengthening activities—also positively impacts a child's brain health. Studies have shown that exercise improves cognition and memory, enhances academic performance, and reduces symptoms of depression.

Kids exercising daily also sets them up for good health in adulthood. It reduces the likelihood that they will experience heart disease, obesity, and Type 2 diabetes . Plus, being physically active is a great stress reducer.

Many children spend much more time indoors than they did in previous generations. Various studies have linked this increase in indoor time to obesity and other health issues.

How much time outdoors should you aim for? The U.S. National Wildlife Federation suggests at least one hour a day. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) also recommends 60 minutes of unstructured, free play (indoors or out) every day.

Getting your children outdoors can help them get in their physical activity and nature time. If you're short on ideas, try hiking on a local nature trail, taking a family bike ride, or tending a small container garden.

Overall, recommendations indicate that electronic media use for entertainment should be limited to about one hour on school days and that screens should be turned off 30-60 minutes before bedtime. Parents should ensure that this entertainment is high-quality and create screen-free zones (like the family dinner table) so children and teens learn to function without their devices.

It can be a challenge to meet all of these recommendations. One way to manage is to combine one or more activities to finish more quickly.

For instance, time outdoors in nature, away from electronic devices, can be combined with exercise and even time with same-age friends. Meanwhile, the time a child or teen needs to be engaged with a parent can be met by eating dinner together.

Establishing a daily plan or school year routine is the key to fitting in everything a child needs. Pre-planning or scheduling can also reduce parent stress, keeping the time you spend with your child positive.

As you plan your child's typical school day, try not to be too rigid. With the exception of sleep, you can be flexible about how your kids spend their time and tailor your routines to meet their specific needs.

The key is getting appropriate rest, attending school, and doing their homework. Socializing, time with family, physical activity, electronic use, and family meal times can be adapted as the days unfold.

In the U.S., 180 days of school is most common, but length of school day varies by state. Pew Research Center . 2023.

Childhood friendships and psychological difficulties in young adulthood: an 18-year follow-up study .  European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry . 2015.

Amount of time to eat lunch is associated with children's selection and consumption of school meal entrée, fruits, vegetables, and milk .  Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics . 2016.

Youth Physical Activity Guidelines Toolkit. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . 2017.

  The power of outdoor play and play in natural environments .  Childhood Education . 2016.

Connecting Kids and Nature. U.S. National Wildlife Federation . n.d.

Promoting Physical Activity. American Academy of Pediatrics . 2022.

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Student Study Time Matters

Vicki nelson.

Most college students want to do well, but they don’t always know what is required to do well. Finding and spending quality study time is one of the first and most important skills that your student can master, but it's rarely as simple as it sounds.

If a student is struggling in class, one of the first questions I ask is, “How much time do you spend studying?”

Although it’s not the only element, time spent studying is one of the basics, so it’s a good place to start. Once we examine time, we can move on to other factors such as how, where, what and when students are studying, but we start with time .

If your student is struggling , help them explore how much time they are spending on schoolwork.

How Much Is Enough?

Very often, a student’s answer to how much time they spend hitting the books doesn’t match the expectation that most professors have for college students. There’s a disconnect about “how much is enough?”

Most college classes meet for a number of “credit hours” – typically 3 or 4. The general rule of thumb (and the definition of credit hour adopted by the Department of Education) is that students should spend approximately 2–3 hours on outside-of-class work for each credit hour or hour spent in the classroom.

Therefore, a student taking five 3-credit classes spends 15 hours each week in class and should be spending 30 hours on work outside of class , or 45 hours/week total.

When we talk about this, I can see on students’ faces that for most of them this isn’t even close to their reality!

According to one survey conducted by the National Survey of Student Engagement, most college students spend an average of 10–13 hours/week studying, or less than 2 hours/day and less than half of what is expected. Only about 11% of students spend more than 25 hours/week on schoolwork.

Why Such a Disconnect?

Warning: math ahead!

It may be that students fail to do the math – or fail to flip the equation.

College expectations are significantly different from the actual time that most high school students spend on outside-of-school work, but the total picture may not be that far off. In order to help students understand, we crunch some more numbers.

Most high school students spend approximately 6 hours/day or 30 hours/week in school. In a 180 day school year, students spend approximately 1,080 hours in school. Some surveys suggest that the average amount of time that most high school students spend on homework is 4–5 hours/week. That’s approximately 1 hour/day or 180 hours/year. So that puts the average time spent on class and homework combined at 1,260 hours/school year.

Now let’s look at college: Most semesters are approximately 15 weeks long. That student with 15 credits (5 classes) spends 225 hours in class and, with the formula above, should be spending 450 hours studying. That’s 675 hours/semester or 1,350 for the year. That’s a bit more than the 1,260 in high school, but only 90 hours, or an average of 3 hours more/week.

The problem is not necessarily the number of hours, it's that many students haven’t flipped the equation and recognized the time expected outside of class.

In high school, students’ 6-hour school day was not under their control but they did much of their work during that time. That hour-or-so a day of homework was an add-on. (Some students definitely spend more than 1 hour/day, but we’re looking at averages.)

In college, students spend a small number of hours in class (approximately 15/week) and are expected to complete almost all their reading, writing and studying outside of class. The expectation doesn’t require significantly more hours; the hours are simply allocated differently – and require discipline to make sure they happen. What students sometimes see as “free time” is really just time that they are responsible for scheduling themselves.

Help Your Student Adjust to College Academics >

How to Fit It All In?

Once we look at these numbers, the question that students often ask is, “How am I supposed to fit that into my week? There aren’t enough hours!”

Again: more math.

I remind students that there are 168 hours in a week. If a student spends 45 hours on class and studying, that leaves 123 hours. If the student sleeps 8 hours per night (few do!), that’s another 56 hours which leaves 67 hours, or at least 9.5 hours/day for work or play.

Many colleges recommend that full-time students should work no more than 20 hours/week at a job if they want to do well in their classes and this calculation shows why.

Making It Work

Many students may not spend 30 or more hours/week studying, but understanding what is expected may motivate them to put in some additional study time. That takes planning, organizing and discipline. Students need to be aware of obstacles and distractions (social media, partying, working too many hours) that may interfere with their ability to find balance.

What Can My Student Do?

Here are a few things your student can try.

• Start by keeping a time journal for a few days or a week . Keep a log and record what you are doing each hour as you go through your day. At the end of the week, observe how you have spent your time. How much time did you actually spend studying? Socializing? Sleeping? Texting? On social media? At a job? Find the “time stealers.”
• Prioritize studying. Don’t hope that you’ll find the time. Schedule your study time each day – make it an appointment with yourself and stick to it.
• Limit phone time. This isn’t easy. In fact, many students find it almost impossible to turn off their phones even for a short time. It may take some practice but putting the phone away during designated study time can make a big difference in how efficient and focused you can be.
• Spend time with friends who study . It’s easier to put in the time when the people around you are doing the same thing. Find an accountability partner who will help you stay on track.
• If you have a job, ask if there is any flexibility with shifts or responsibilities. Ask whether you can schedule fewer shifts at prime study times like exam periods or when a big paper or project is due. You might also look for an on-campus job that will allow some study time while on the job. Sometimes working at a computer lab, library, information or check-in desk will provide down time. If so, be sure to use it wisely.
• Work on strengthening your time management skills. Block out study times and stick to the plan. Plan ahead for long-term assignments and schedule bite-sized pieces. Don’t underestimate how much time big assignments will take.

Being a full-time student is a full-time job. Start by looking at the numbers with your student and then encourage them to create strategies that will keep them on task.

With understanding and practice, your student can plan for and spend the time needed to succeed in college.

Get stories and expert advice on all things related to college and parenting.

Table of Contents

• Rhythm of the First Semester
• Tips from a Student on Making It Through the First Year
• Who Is Your First‑Year Student?
• Campus Resources: Your Cheat Sheet
• Handling Roommate Issues

• Study Time Matters
• The Importance of Professors and Advisors
• Should My Student Withdraw from a Difficult Course?

• Essential Health Conversations
• A Mental Health Game Plan for College Students and Families
• Assertiveness is the Secret Sauce
• Is Your Student at Risk for an Eating Disorder?

• Learning to Manage Money
• 5 Ways to Begin Career Prep in the First Year
• The Value of Outside Opportunities

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You spend 71.5% of your year at work

Make sure you’re spending it wisely by managing it with automatic time-tracking apps.

How Many Work Hours in a Year? A Comprehensive Guide

Are you curious about how many work hours are in a year ? I’ve counted the work days and crunched the numbers so you can have a clear idea of your working hours in a year.

Before we get cracking, here’s what you’ll learn in this article:

A breakdown of the factors that influence the total work hours in a year

Accurate calculations and formulas on how many hours you work in a year

How an automatic work hours tracker helps keep track of every work hour

The standard work hours in a year

To calculate work hours accurately, we need to start from the standard yearly work hours, which apply to most of the United States and not only.

If we start with the standard schedule of typical full-time employees, the average hours worked, and regular paid time off, we’ll be calculating work hours with ease.

A typical full-time job consists of 40 weekly hours of work

There are 52 weeks in a year

Using these figures, I’ll make a simple calculation:

40 hours/week × 52 weeks = 2,080 total hours worked per year

This number, 2,080 hours, is often used as the standard for full-time employment in many countries, including the United States. Remember that at this stage of the calculation, I have not included paid holiday hours, specific holidays for federal employees, or overtime hours.

Make sure your time is well spent by managing it with automatic, smart and secure time tracking apps.

Once I demonstrate how to deduct the above and what factors need to be taken into consideration to obtain the total hours of work, you will discover how many working hours you have in a year.

If you’d like to explore this topic more, I’ve written a guide on how many work days there are in a year, too. I’ve also explained concepts like leap year and why 2024 is a leap year.

Work hours based on a weekly schedule

Even if there’s a standard number of hours worked per week generally accepted, many of us have a flexible hour workweek, so the average working hours differ. Some of us choose to work less to spend more time with our families or simply to achieve a healthy work-life balance.

Regardless of our reasons, we end up with a different work schedule , which determines how many hours we work in a year. Here’s a breakdown of yearly work hours based on different weekly schedules:

20 work hours per week leads to 1,040 hours worked in a year

25 work hours per week leads to 1,300 hours worked in a year

30 work hours per week leads to 1,560 hours worked in a year

35 work hours per week leads to 1,820 hours worked in a year

40 work hours per week leads to 2,080 hours worked in a year

45 work hours per week leads to 2,340 hours worked in a year

50 work hours per week leads to 2,600 hours worked in a year

55 work hours per week leads to 2,860 hours worked in a year

60 work hours per week leads to 3,120 hours worked in a year

How many non-work hours do you have in a year?

In order to find out the number of hours in which you’re not working in a calendar year, you’ll need to subtract the total number of hours worked in a year from the total hours in a year.

A typical year comprises 8,760 hours (365 days × 24 hours = 8,760 hours). Starting from this premises, let’s uncover how many non-work hours you have in a year based on different work schedules:

20-hour workweek: 8,760 hours – 1,040 work hours = 7,720 non-working hours

25-hour workweek: 8,760 hours – 1,300 work hours = 7,460 non-working hours

30-hour workweek: 8,760 hours – 1,560 work hours = 7,200 non-working hours

35-hour workweek: 8,760 hours – 1,820 work hours = 6,940 non-working hours

40-hour workweek: 8,760 hours – 2,080 work hours = 6,680 non-working hours

45-hour workweek: 8,760 hours – 2,340 work hours = 6,420 non-working hours

50-hour workweek: 8,760 hours – 2,600 work hours = 6,160 non-working hours

55-hour workweek: 8,760 hours – 2,860 work hours = 5,900 non-working hours

60-hour workweek: 8,760 hours – 3,120 work hours = 5,640 non-working hours

You know best how you’re planning your non-working hours. However, spending them on leisure activities and non-work-related tasks contributes to your well-being and work-life balance . What’s more, being aware of the number of hours off work helps you plan your PTO hours and holidays.

Factors affecting annual work hours

As demonstrated above, there are a few baselines for the number of work hours someone generally has; however, we still need to account for several factors that significantly impact the actual number of hours an employee works in a year.

The weekly work hours and yearly can depend on company policies, industry standards, or individual circumstances.

These factors are public holidays, federal holidays, sick days, personal time off, or overtime hours/days.

To calculate the total hours worked in a year, you’ll need to perform the following:

Total hours in a work year = (Number of working hours per week x 52) – [(PTO days + number of paid holidays) x number of working hours per day]

Guide to calculate work hours in a year

1. track your work hours.

Both as an employee and an employer, you want to make sure you’re not working too many hours in a year. So, the first step in understanding your own labor statistics is to track your weekly hours of work diligently. This way, you’ll be able to easily calculate your total yearly work hours by multiplying them by 52.

How? Simply multiply your hours worked in a day by the number of working days in a week. If you’re looking for a seamless method, try Timeular’s time card calculator , as it calculates your work hours automatically. Here’s a preview of the calculator:

The calculator will automatically summarize base hours, overtime tracking , total work hours, and total pay based on your input. Your time spent on work will be converted into decimal hours automatically.

You’re able to download the time card data in a PDF format and print it out to keep a hard copy if needed.

Now, to obtain the total number of annual hours in a year, you need to multiply it by 52. For example, if you tracked 41 hours of work during a week, which includes overtime or additional hours, you will multiply it by 52, as follows:

41 hours of work/week x 52 = 2,132 work hours/year

Note that you still need to deduct certain days, like vacation days and other paid time off.

2. Deduct your time off

From the total you obtained so far, in order to get to the final annual hours in a year, you need to deduct paid holiday hours, federal holidays, vacation days, or sick time.

The paid time off depend on the country and its public holidays or the policies of the companies you’re working for.

Most employers offer paid holidays to their salaried employees, though they are not liable by law. In the U.S., the average number of paid holidays is 7-11 days per year. The US federal holidays are listed on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management Website , but here are the federal holidays for the record:

New Year’s Day — Monday, January 1st,

Martin Luther King Jr. Day — Monday, January 15th,

Presidents’ Day ( or Washington’s Birthday) — Monday, February 19th,

Memorial Day — Monday, May 27th,

Juneteenth National Independence Day — Wednesday, June 19th,

Independence Day — Thursday, July 4th,

Labor Day — Monday, September 2nd,

Columbus Day — Monday, October 14th,

Veterans Day — Monday, November 11th,

Thanksgiving Day — Thursday, November 28th, and

Christmas Day — Wednesday, December 25th.

After deducting the federal holidays, full- time workers on a standard schedule will need to add up to 88 hours (resulting from 8 hours a day x 11 federal days).

So, the public holidays reduce the number of hours worked to 88 hours in the United States.

Deduct all time off from your yearly hours

The average paid vacation time in the U.S. ranges from 10-20 days, depending on your years of service. So, deduct holiday hours, too, in your final calculation.

Also, consider that you might also need some sick leave or just personal days off in which you need to take care of your personal errands or challenges. Many companies do offer paid sick leave and personal days.

Starting from the premises that you worked for 8 hours a day in a year, and you have 11 public holidays, together with ten more holiday days, you end up with:

2,080 hours – 88 hours (public holidays) – 80 hours (vacation days) = 1,912 total annual work hours

An automatic time-tracking makes you aware of your time-spending habits and helps you make better use of your time.

Why does should you know your annual work hours?

One of the main reasons is that you’re spending 71,5% of your year at work on a standard schedule, which is quite a lot of your time, right? You should leverage it and spend it wisely.

At the same time, understanding your annual work hours is far more than just a numerical exercise. Your relationship with work can have profound implications on your personal time and life, too. Let’s explore both the commonly recognized and the often-overlooked benefits of knowing your yearly work hours.

1. Accurate salary calculations and negotiations

For hourly employees or part-time workers, knowing your annual work hours is crucial for estimating your yearly earnings and obtaining fair pay. This knowledge empowers hourly workers to, and not only to:

Compare job offers and hourly rates, and, if the case, negotiate raises with a clear understanding of your current compensation;

Plan for potential overtime earnings based on your overtime pay;

Make informed decisions on your annual spending, holidays taken, and investments;

Understand the true value of your time, potentially leading to more informed career decisions.

2. Work-life balance optimization

Awareness of your annual work hours comes up with a specific measure of your time allocation , which then allows you to:

Assess whether your current job aligns with your lifestyle goals or not;

Identify periods of overwork and potential burnout risks, which are higher and higher, according to research , particularly after the Pandemic;

Plan your work capacity based on your regular hours of work and time off;

Justify requests for flexible working schedules, additional time off, or working extra hours;

3. Legal compliance and employee rights

Understanding annual work hours is pivotal for both employers and employees when discussing legal considerations:

Ensuring compliance with labor laws regarding overtime, breaks, and maximum working hours a day or shifts;

Identifying potential wage and hour violations;

Supporting cases for fair labor practices or workplace improvements;

Helping with accurate calculation of benefits, holiday pay, and retirement contributions;

4. Precise budgeting and financial planning

Both individuals and businesses benefit from accurate work-hour calculations by:

Creating precise personal budgets or company forecasts;

Planning for major expenses or investments based on expected earnings;

Estimating tax liabilities more accurately;

Making informed decisions about savings and retirement planning;

Timeular fills out timesheets automatically

If you’re either an employee, part of the HR team or the founder of an agency who needs to invoice, or calculate payroll hours , but stumble upon the question “how many work hours did I do” or ” how many work hours did this employee do this month”, an automatic time tracking alletiavtes your pain.

Yes, sending manual  timesheet reminders  or sending  timesheet memes  can work, but it’s consuming your time, and let’s be honest, we’re living in the all-automatic era, and we need to be at the top of our games.

So, leave timesheets to an automatic time-tracking app like Timeular . Such a timesheet will surface all data you’ll need in a customized report, easily exportable in a PDF or CSV.

Here’s an example in which you already see the overtime hours and deficit hours some employees worked:

That’s not all; with this time reporting system , you can manage all time off requests.

Remember about the timesheet reminders?

Here’s an example sent through Timeular automatically – I received it a few weeks ago, so you don’t need to remind anyone.

“Hi Madalina,

Quick friendly reminder. It’s time to wrap up last week’s timesheet. Right now, you’ve logged  33.4  of  40  hours ( 83.5% ). Could you please double-check and fill in any missing time entries or leave requests? If you’ve done so already, please disregard this automatic reminder.

Thanks for keeping things up-to-date!

Warm regards,”

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How to Spend Time to Maximize Happiness

Which activities make people most (and least) happy.

Posted August 8, 2024 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

• How we spend our time impacts happiness.
• Some activities make us happier than others.
• Simply knowing this can help you prioritize your resources and plan accordingly.

Time is the great equalizer in life. No matter where you live, what you do for work, or how much money you have, we are all granted 24 hours in a day that we can choose to optimize accordingly. The sobering truth is that a lot of this time is spent on mundane activities ( sleeping , chores) and obligations (work). However, even the busiest of us have some free time to do with as we please. This raises the focal question of this post: What activities are best for making us happy?

In a survey conducted for Our World in Data, a project published by the non-profit organization Global Change Data Lab , going to the theater, concerts, sporting games/events, playing with children, and going to restaurants/pubs were the top five activities that make people the happiest on average 1 . Note that all five of these activities are both exciting and typically involve a social component. Seeing a performer we love or a sports team we support can be fun, memorable, and potentially a once-in-a-lifetime event that we cherish and will look back on with a smile on our face for weeks, months, or years. These findings support research showing that spending money on experiences (vs. material goods) boosts happiness 2 .

Concert tickets and dining out can be expensive. Activities that are a little lower on the list that are enjoyable without the price tag include sleeping, board games and computer games, religious services, playing sports, hobbies, and walking dogs. If you’re on a budget or looking for something more ordinary on any given day, consider spending time on one of these cheap or free activities to boost your mood.

What about the activities that make us least happy? The top five villains in this case were doing homework, looking/applying for a job, domestic chores (cleaning, laundry), commuting, and working. These activities all fall under the umbrella of tasks we must do. Although these tasks can be unavoidable in some cases, one can be creative in an attempt to make them more fun.

Listening to music or an entertaining podcast can make homework, chores, and commuting more enjoyable when paired together. For particularly unpleasant yet important tasks, create a reward for yourself once you’ve finished. For example, plan a dinner out at a restaurant you love or a movie you’ve been wanting to see that evening to help get you through the task.

Breaking up unpleasant tasks at home or at work can also be highly effective. Planning to sit down for 4-plus hours straight and work on a difficult or unpleasant task is extremely hard, especially if there is no concrete deadline. I recently bought a timer to track work time, which I usually set for 45 minutes for work tasks. Once the 45 minutes is up, I will go for a short walk, have a snack, or watch a YouTube video before getting back to work. This technique, similar to the Pomodoro method, can help increase enjoyment and motivation . Give it a try.

The old adage “knowledge is power" rings true for understanding the activities we can spend our valuable resources of time and money on to increase happiness. By deliberately spending resources more on the positive, less on the negative, and exercising creativity in finding tricks to make unenjoyable tasks a little more fun, we can become the architects of our happiness.

https://ourworldindata.org/time-use

Gilovich, T., Kumar, A., & Jampol, L. (2015). A wonderful life: Experiential consumption and the pursuit of happiness. Journal of consumer psychology , 25 (1), 152-165.

Max Alberhasky, Ph.D. , is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at California State University Long Beach. His research examines consumer psychology and the interplay between money, social relationships, and happiness.

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How I learned to stop worrying and love the wasp – and why you should, too

We spend our summers in fear of the sting of the wasp – and yet we all want to save the bee. How do we extend as much empathy and grace to wasps and other less charismatic pollinators that are just as crucial to our ecosystems?

Seirian Sumner is a professor of behavioural ecology at University College London and the author of Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps.

The moment I became a cheerleader for wasps was when my six-year-old daughter came home from school and thrust a crumbled, well-thumbed piece of paper into my hands.

“Mummy, we learned about wasps at school today,” she told me. “Oh, how exciting!” I replied, and I really was excited – after all, I had been studying them for more than 15 years at that point, and here was an opportunity to connect with my daughter on the topic. “So what did you learn?” She held out the scrap of paper, but then stared at her feet. I unfolded the page, curious as to why she looked so anxious.

“Fill in the blanks,” the assignment’s instructions read. I scanned the page and its series of incomplete sentences with spaces where my daughter had submitted a suitable connecting word. “I feel hungry when I smell freshly baked bread.” “The girl ran up the road toward the ice-cream van.”

And then: “I hate wasps because they sting me in the summer.”

Of course, this was meant to be an exercise in literacy, not a lesson about wasps (or bread or ice cream). But to see proof that cultural indoctrination against the objects of my fascination begins so young – even at my own child’s school – was a punch in the stomach.

I decided I had to punch back.

Seirian Sumner, shown at home in Oxfordshire, is a professor of behavioural ecology who set out to learn more about our cultural preconceptions of wasps. Justin Griffiths-Williams

The first thing I had to come to terms with was that people really do hate wasps. There’s no denying it: The social norms (of Westerners, at least) tend toward a deep dislike of them.

In every talk I give about wasps, I ask audience members to share words they associate with them. Invariably, the associations that spring to mind include “sting,” “annoying,” “scary,” “evil,” “demons” – and, depending on the age group, a lot of rude words, too.

When I ask the same thing about bees, on the other hand, I get very different answers: “honey,” “cute,” “useful,” “pollination,” “summer.” Rarely do they include the word “sting” (or any epithets, for that matter). Yet both bees and wasps sting, and people are equally likely to become highly allergic to stings from either insect. Arguably, then, bees and wasps are equally threatening.

So why don’t people use the word “sting” to describe bees, too?

The reason is that people have a good understanding of what bees do – both for us, and for their ecosystems. They are essential pollinators in both farmed and natural ecosystems, and of course we keep honeybees for honey and wax; as semi-domesticated animals, they are the cow of the insect world. Even your average preschooler knows that bees are good, and has at least some idea of why. The same dynamic plays out in academia, too: for every scientific paper on the ecology of wasps, there are 40 such papers on bees, despite there being five times more species of wasps.

But bees also earned our empathy through massive and moneyed campaigns to save them from seemingly imminent demise. In the early 2000s, bee populations appeared to be declining significantly as fears grew about colony collapse disorder. Society’s focus landed on the honeybee, in particular, in large part because the species is so valued by humans and our food and agriculture industries. Companies and governments around the world enacted honeybee-protecting changes amid focused research, funding initiatives and wide-scale cultural popularization, including with bee merchandise – mugs, socks, furnishings, you name it. In short, it became easy to fall in love with bees.

Since then, the focus has shifted to include other pollinators whose populations are now more at risk, such as wild bees. This is good news for biodiversity – but we haven’t gone far enough. Instead, we’re continuing to cherry-pick which species we champion, largely on the basis of charisma, cuteness and the amount that we understand about them.

But the populations of many insect species are still plunging around the world. And we need to care just as much for harder-to-love ones if we hope to protect the interconnected communities that make up a healthy ecosystem. Like it or not, this includes wasps.

The gaps in our knowledge and empathy are why so many of us are not prepared to forgive wasps for the occasional sting, as we do bees. But if we continue to extend so little grace, that will only sting for us all, down the road.

Illustration by Alëna Skarina

So what do wasps do, and why should we care about them?

As apex predators in the insect world, wasps play critical roles in ecosystems – whether it’s your garden, a farm or a nature reserve – by keeping populations of other insects and arthropods in check. Flies, beetles, cockroaches, spiders, weevils, caterpillars – you name it, wasps hunt it. The yellowjacket wasp – the one that’s common in North America and bothers you in the summer when you’re enjoying a barbecue, an ice-cream cone or summer drink – is a poster child for natural pest control: a single colony removes around four kilograms of insect prey in a season. In a world without wasps, we would be inundated with unwanted arthropods – creepy-crawlies that we might dislike almost as much as wasps – and we’d be using much more damaging chemicals to keep these pests at bay.

Some wasps should also be commended as decomposers and recyclers. Social wasps, such as the Canadian yellowjacket wasp and some paper wasps from South America, will happily scavenge meat from carcasses. This might be a dead pigeon in your yard – wasps can strip a bird clean to the bone in a few hours – or it might be that sausage on your grill: It’s all protein to her, which she needs to feed the hungry growing brood back in the nest.

Wasps look for protein-rich meat, like this sliced ham, to feed their young. That might be annoying when the source is in your lunch, but it is a boon when the wasps clean away wild animal carcasses. Jens Kalaene/dpa-Zentralbild/ZB via Reuters Connect

This is why, if you have a wasp visiting your backyard get-together this summer, consider giving her an offering. Watch her carefully to see what she fancies, and then when she’s taken a hunk of it off to her nest, slice off a bit and leave it out for her, because it’s very likely she’ll come back for more. If she does, she’ll happily harvest from her own private picnic, and leave you in peace. Wasps aren’t as effective at recruiting their nestmates to a food source as bees. But the presence of a wasp on some prey or carrion will attract other wasps, so while an offering might lure in others, it will keep them away from you. Also, if a wasp is zigzagging in front of you, it’s not a threat; they’re not out to get you! They’re simply gathering information about you as a landmark to relocate their loot later on. Do your wasp a favour: Don’t flail your arms around and shout. If you do this, you’ll be behaving like a predator that she’s evolved to defend her nest against. You know how that ends.

But most crucially, and perhaps most surprisingly, is the fact that wasps are pollinators. A glimpse into their life cycle and biology helps make sense of this. Adult wasps are hunters, but the meat they hunt is intended only for the larvae; the adults themselves are vegetarians, and still need nutrition. They get this from flowers, by accessing nectar, just as bees and other insects do. Although most wasps don’t have specialist pollen-carrying morphology, such as the pollen baskets on the legs of many bees, pollen does get stuck on their bodies – wasps are hairier than you think – and they transfer it from flower to flower, just as bees do.

Wasp pollination is poorly studied, but one study revealed that Polistes paper wasps, which are common in parts of Canada, are just as effective in pollination as bumblebees. Another more recent study showed that wasps transport just as much pollen as bees, but that they occupy a different niche than them – meaning that the pollination services of wasps may actually complement what bees do, serving ecosystems in different but important ways. Many wasps are generalists, meaning that they visit lots of different types of flowers; they are less fussy than many bees, who have evolved to be specialist pollinators for specific plant species or flower types. Wasps, therefore, may be important backup pollinators, particularly in degraded environments that cannot support healthy bee populations.

There is a mismatch in what people broadly understand about wasps compared with what we know about other insects, even though there is so much that is fascinating about them. Which group of insects, for instance, has the most species? Most people will say beetles, and that may currently be the textbook answer; there are more than 350,000 described species of beetles. But we all suffer from beetle bias: they’re striking, with their iridescent bodies and multipronged horns, and showing off your prized beetle collection was top entertainment at high-society parties in the 1800s. But wasps are likely to supersede beetles as the most speciose and diverse of any insect group. There is a lot more to wasps than the picnic-bothering yellowjacket wasp: Currently, around 130,000 species of wasps have been described, but there are estimated to be five to 10 times more species yet to discover.

Around 70 per cent of wasps are parasitoids: They don’t have stingers, you’ve probably not even noticed them because most are minuscule, and they are used as biocontrol agents around the world. Parasitoids, which include the smallest insect in the world – the fairy fly, which is less than 0.15 millimetres long and only lives for a few days – lay eggs in live prey (a beetle, bug or fly) without the victim knowing. While the host carries on with its life, the wasp larva munches its way through the prey’s tissue, finally killing it when the wasp pupates.

It sounds gruesome – okay, it is a bit gruesome, so much so that parasitoid wasps provided Charles Darwin with arguments for his revolutionary theory of evolution by natural selection: “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars ,” he wrote. But how they do this is incredible: The wasp has to locate the prey, often by detecting a hidden larva inside a plant stem using its antenna; it then injects the egg into the prey, along with a venom cocktail that suppresses the immune system of the host, ensuring the baby wasp can feast happily. And as a pesticide-free way to combat crop pests, parasitoid wasps are gruesomely useful to us.

Trichogramma wasps are parasites that target the eggs of butterflies and moths, a valuable form of population control for pests that damage crops. BERTRAND NICOLAS/AFP/Getty Images

Most people are less familiar with parasitic wasps than their social cousins, like the ones that built this paper nest in Dartmouth, N.S. Sandor Fizli/Halifax Daily News via CP

If so many wasps don’t sting, why are we obsessed with the ones that do? It’s largely because the wasps we most come into contact with are the vespines: the large family of social wasps that include yellowjackets and hornets, which build big paper nests with an envelope around them, as well as paper wasps, which in Canada build small paper nests without an envelope. These insects live in societies, just like honeybees and bumblebees. They have a single queen, and a bunch of workers (all female) who raise the brood and maintain the nest. Their societies are every bit as awesome as those of social bees: They communicate with each other, passing on information adult-to-adult and brood-to-adult about the needs of the colony, about who’s the boss, and about who’s been misbehaving (ie. laying eggs when they shouldn’t). It’s a veritable soap opera, with a cast of evolutionary wonders. The notorious yellowjackets terrorizing your barbecue are superorganisms: no individual wasp can live alone; they fulfill different roles in the colony, functioning like different tissues in your body. Just as your liver can’t survive without your heart, and vice versa, a worker wasp cannot survive without the queen, and vice versa.

Working out how and why these superorganisms evolve has kept scientists (like Darwin and me!) busy for years. We now understand that altruistic behaviour evolves (in the worker caste) because they are able to pass on their genes by raising relatives. The queen and worker castes are produced from a shared genome by expressing different suites of genes, and the regulatory switch telling them which genes to express happens in response to the environment – either the food they’re fed as brood, or the social and/or ecological environment they experience as adults.

I still get a kick out of feeling the mood swing from wasp-negative to wasp-positive when I share these secrets with audiences. It doesn’t take much for people to look beyond the sting, and see that wasps are important, fascinating and diverse – even if some do grisly things. In my opinion, wasps match bees in terms of fascination by every measure – and by some, they leave bees in the ashes.

But it is frustrating that we need reasons to care about the facets of nature that are harder to appreciate, purely because we don’t know enough about them or their contributions to our lives. This is simply unacceptable during a global biodiversity crisis. We have a responsibility to care about every aspect of nature, and not just the iconic, cute species that we find easy to love or appreciate.

Organisms do not exist in isolation. They require an assemblage of other species around them – an ecosystem – to survive. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes an ecosystem to save a species. Wasps are a critical part of every ecosystem, so we need to do our part in this global village and learn to love them.

iStockphoto

The bug beat: More from The Globe and Mail

The decibel podcast.

Climate change has helped ticks to multiply and spread across Canada, bringing Lyme disease and other infections. Researcher Vett Lloyd spoke with The Decibel about how to spot them and what to do if you find one. Subscribe for more episodes.

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The dark side of investor-driven housing, better sex through scheduling, and other fixes for stressed-out people who want more heat in the sheets, tesla stops taking orders for cheapest cybertruck, offers $100,000 version now, adieu paris you were your genuine self and the olympic games were better for it, politicians, stop trying to make ‘brat’ happen. you’re being weird, police searching for senior feared swept away by record rains brought by storm debby in southern quebec, democrats take a page from the trump playbook, in the wreckage of the jasper wildfires, residents see a need to create a community built to last.

What working long hours does to your body

Experts warn that working long hours can increase your risk of heart disease, lower back pain, and type 2 diabetes—and the tipping point might be sooner than you think.

Increased stress. Anxiety. Lower back pain. High blood pressure. If you’ve been working long hours at the office, then you might be intimately acquainted with some of the ways that overwork can have an impact on your health.

But even as debate rages over whether it’s time to switch to a four-day workweek, some workplaces are headed the other direction: In July, Greece passed legislation allowing some employers to mandate a six-day workweek, while Samsung is requiring its executives to work a six-day week. This raises the question of what impact working long hours has on the body.

In 2021, the World Health Organization and International Labor Organization released a report that looked at the health risks of overwork. The report found that working long hours, defined as more than 55 hours a week, was responsible for 745,000 deaths from stroke and heart disease in 2016—a 29 percent increase since 2000.    

“There’s sufficient data to show that excessive work is the first occupational disease in the world,” says Alexis Descatha, a researcher at the Hospital and University of Angers-Inserm, based in France. As research is showing, even a 40-hour workweek, which has long been upheld as the standard for work-life balance, may not be as good for our health as we once thought.    

The hidden consequences of overwork

The health effects of overwork can be both direct and indirect. The stress associated with working long hours can have a direct impact on your health, by keeping your body in a constant state of flight-or-flight. This in turn leads to raised cortisol levels , which affects blood sugar levels, and alters the immune system.

Over time, if this stress becomes chronic , it can lead to a number of health issues, such as high blood pressure, headaches, anxiety, depression, digestive issues, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, or sleep disturbances.    

( Do you have chronic stress? Look for these signs .)

Working long hours can also have an indirect effect, by taking away the time that a person can use to engage in healthy activities. “When you work too much, you don’t have time to sleep well, to eat well, to play sports,” Descatha says. By replacing leisure time activities, such as going for a walk or spending time with family, with more work, this can compound the negative health effects.    

As research is showing, these negative health impacts might not start showing up years down the road.   In the report released by the WHO and ILO , the majority of deaths related to overwork were in workers over the age of 60, who had reported working 55 hours or more while younger.

“Ten years seems to be the point at which we really see a step increase” in the cumulative health effects of overwork, says Grace Sembajwe, a researcher at Indiana University School of Public Health in Bloomington, Indiana. For those who work long hours over a shorter period—finishing up a stressful project, for example—the health effects are lesser, and can be mitigated if they stop working long hours.      

Although the strongest effects are seen in workers who work more than 55 hours a week, Sembajwe notes these effects are also seen in workers who work more than 40 hours a week.

“Even the 40-hour week isn’t that great, from a health perspective,” Sembajwe says. As research is showing , reduced workweeks result in better life quality, improved sleep, and reduced stress . As a result, some countries are starting to put in protections for shorter workweeks and longer vacation times. This includes Iceland, where 86 percent of workers have a four-day workweek , and Denmark, which has an official 37-hour workweek , with five weeks of mandated vacation time per year.    

How sitting too long increases your risk  

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, civilian workers sit an average of 3.46 hours a day. For office workers, this number might be as much eight to 10 hours a day, while for manual labor jobs, this might be as little as one hour a day.

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For office workers, spending long hours sitting at a desk can have an effect over time, by increasing their risk for developing a number of chronic diseases , such as high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes.     And that risk only increases the longer you spend at work. “If you increase your working hours, you are increasing your sitting time,” says Aidan Buffey, a researcher at the University of Limerick in Ireland, whose research focuses on the health effects of sedentary time in office workers.

How much sitting is too much? As Buffey notes, the tipping point seems to be somewhere around eight to 10 hours a day, with sedentary time greater than 11 hours leading to a much higher risk of developing health issues. For workers who follow up their sedentary time at work with sedentary activities such as watching TV during their free time, this can quickly add up to greater than eight hours a day.    

Office workers are also at a higher risk for certain overuse injuries, such as neck or lower back pain , due to sitting for long hours every day. “Sitting is a stressful position for your spine,” says Ryan Steiner, a physical therapist at the Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio.    

These health issues can be offset by exercise, with the risks noticeably decreasing in people who get an average of 150 to 300 minutes of physical activity a week . These effects can also be offset by taking short breaks throughout the day, whether it’s walking for a few minutes or shifting to a standing desk.    

The physical activity paradox  

For people working in manual labor, however, the increased physical activity can work against them, a phenomenon known as the physical activity paradox . Although increased physical activity in your leisure time helps guard against cardiovascular disease, increased physical activity as part of work actually increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.    

Researchers are still trying to understand the reasons for this paradox but one possible explanation is that, unlike in your leisure time, workers don’t have control over the length and intensity of their physical activity.

“The body is in a bit of chronic stress,” Buffey says. “They’re also not able to recover because they have to go back to work the next day.” The effects of chronic stress can also be compounded by other lifestyle factors, such as not being able to eat a balanced diet or prioritize sleep.

( 7 tips for getting better sleep .)

Elite athletes, on the other hand, don’t see a negative effect from their high levels of physical activity . This can likely be attributed to the fact that in order to maintain their athletic performance, they have to prioritize rest, recovery, and good nutrition outside of work.    

Working conditions matter—and flexibility makes a difference  

Your working environment can either amp up the stress of working long hours or it can offset those health risks.  

As research is showing , workers who have greater control over their working environment—such as being able to control the pace at which they work or the number of responsibilities that they take on— report less stress compared to their peers with less control. This in turn translates to better health outcomes, such as a decreased risk of heart disease. “We do know that jobs with high demand and low control are associated with cardiovascular disease,” Sembajwe says.    

Employees who have flexibility over their work schedule, which includes being able to adjust it as needed to accommodate the demands of their home life, have better mental health than employees who don’t have control over their schedule. As research shows , this effect is true, even when comparing employees who work a similar number of hours each week.

“Work flexibility itself, independent of numbers of hours worked, independent of paid time off, is negatively correlated with depression or anxiety,” says Pearl McElfish, a researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, in Little Rock, Arkansas. “People who have that flexibility report less anxiety and depression than people who don’t have that flexibility.”    

  As it turns out, when it comes to working to live, rather than living to work, we all stand to benefit from a shorter, more flexible workweek.

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