Why is uni so boring

They skip lectures and tutorials and only attend campus when they must. They prefer to "learn" online and do not see university as a life-changing experience that is about more than textbooks and classrooms. I know what you're thinking: this is another millennial-bashing column built on observation rather than fact. The truth is, we do not know enough about student engagement at uni, its linkages with learning and employment outcomes, and factors influencing engagement.

Student engagement is not the same as student satisfaction. Some universities promote high student satisfaction ratings, even though it's not always clear what the findings are based on.

As an aside, why do weaker unis often have higher student satisfaction ratings do they have less-demanding students who are easier to please?

My view of student engagement relates to how many voluntary lectures and tutorials they attend and how engaged they are on campus. Do they attend uni most days? Have they joined student associations? Do they use university resources and attend events? Do they play sport on campus, use the gym, watch bands and participate in uni competitions?

I want to know how immersed students are in the full university experience, how that compares across universities and whether the trend is rising or falling. We'll never know, of course, given the difficulty of collecting this data across the sector and the risks of what it might show. So, allow me to indulge in an anecdote. As a sessional university lecturer for many years, I was dismayed at falling student attendance.

In my course of more than students at different times, it was common for fewer than 30 to attend lectures by semester's end.

Those who attended said they loved the lectures on entrepreneurship. Some even invited friends from other courses to attend.

I made tutorial attendance compulsory because few students would have shown up otherwise. When I asked students why they skipped lectures, it was a familiar story: taped lectures were easier to watch online even though few did ; lectures clashed with part-time work or sporting functions; or they were just too busy.

Uni was one of several priorities. Moreover, the university's campus was dull. No loud music, protests, risk-taking or vibrant atmosphere. I missed the comfort of my close-knit group of school friends and was painfully aware that I had nobody to go for a coffee or to lectures with.

I felt desperately lonely. When it came to choosing housemates for the second year when we had to find accommodation off campus , I panicked and ended up living with two people I barely knew.

One housemate unexpectedly moved his girlfriend in and they basically took over the house. They spent hours making cosy dinners and watching TV cuddled up.

They left their underwear on the bathroom floor and their dirty dishes hung around until there was mould growing on all the plates. When we asked if his girlfriend would be paying any rent or bills, it just caused arguments. I know that this is part of the university experience — that learning to negotiate difficult situations and navigate tricky relationships is part of growing up for everyone.

But it was awful. I developed insomnia and felt anxious in the house. I met two people over the three years I was there, neither of whom were students. They both had jobs and their own flats in a nearby city, so I would always stay with them.

They kept asking to come and see me but I refused. I was desperate to get away. I was single for six months in between and spent most of it alone in my room.

I met my second boyfriend through Twitter. I was incredibly bored in a lecture once so I messaged him and it went from there. Sometimes I wish I had been single for longer - it might have made me go out and meet more people. But not having a boyfriend to look forward to seeing at weekends would have made a bad situation even worse.

At school, I had been a star pupil, but here I found myself struggling to get good marks. My tutorials were either confusing or tedious, and some of the tutors were unhelpful and abrupt when I asked for advice. I was devastated. I also found the pace unbearably slow. For two weeks in third grade, I preached the gospel of the wild boar.

My teacher, the sprightly Mrs. DeWilde, assigned my class an open-ended research project: Create a five-minute presentation about any exotic animal. I devoted my free time before bedtime to capturing the wonders of the Sus scrofa in a minute sermon. I filled a poster as big as my 9-year-old self with photographs, facts, and charts, complete with a fold-out diagram of the snout.

I attacked each new project that year — a sketch of the water cycle, a history of the Powhatan — with the same evangelism. Come class, I spent more time playing Snake on my graphing calculator than reviewing integrals, more time daydreaming than conjugating verbs. What happened in those nine years?

Many things. But mainly, like the majority of my fellow Americans, I fell victim to the epidemic of classroom boredom. By high school, the number dropped to four in A follow-up study found that less than a third of 11th-graders felt engaged. Only 2 percent said they were never bored. The evidence suggests that, on a daily basis, the vast majority of teenagers seriously contemplate banging their heads against their desks. But who cares? In fact, in the preface to Boredom: A Lively History , Peter Toohey presents the possibility that boredom might not even exist.

A study that followed students at the University of Munich over the course of an academic year found a cycle in which boredom bore lower test results, which bore higher levels of boredom, which bore still lower test results. Boredom accounts for nearly a third of variation in student achievement.

A Columbia University survey found that U. Proneness to boredom is also associated with anxiety, impulsiveness, hopelessness, loneliness, gambling, and depression. Educators and academics, Ed School faculty and alumni among them, have begun to engage with boredom, investigating its systemic causes and potential solutions.

It is a central issue. Every year for 14 years, Victor Pereira Jr. Engaging the students who are already discouraged was an uphill battle. He says he was never taught skills like planning and organizing, and failed because the grading rubric neglected his style of learning. We both agreed. Sam Semrow, Ed. She read novels through math class, skipped days, contemplated dropping out, and barely graduated with a 1.

Rose has proposed a solution.