Students at UH have big burden, survey says

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

Students at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa are more likely than students on the Mainland to be working their way through school, caring for a child or family member, and commuting — and this affects their overall educational experience, according to a survey that tracks student learning across the country.

According to the National Survey of Student Engagement — a survey of 135,000 students from 613 randomly picked four-year colleges — UH students exhibit a markedly different profile from their Mainland peers.

The survey also asks students to evaluate their entire educational experience and the level of academic challenge. In both, the overall scores among freshmen were lower at Manoa than at Mainland institutions, though they improved as students moved into higher levels of study.

UH-Manoa freshmen spend 1.91 hours a week as caregivers for a child or other family member, compared with 1.29 hours for students nationally. UH-Manoa seniors spend 2.22 hours a week, compared with 1.91 hours for seniors nationally. These are statistically significant differences, according to the survey.

They are also some of the reasons UH students take longer to graduate and show lower levels of interest and participation in campus life, said Karl Kim, Manoa's interim vice chancellor for academic affairs.

"We have a much higher percentage of Manoa students who are caregivers, and a higher proportion who are commuters compared to other doctoral institutions," said Kim.

"Those things affect our students in terms of the amount of time spent preparing for class and also their engagement in class. There's a much lower participation in campus activities compared to other big research institutions on a par with UH."

The survey is taken annually by Indiana University's Center for Post-Secondary Education in conjunction with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, a national organization financed by the Carnegie and Pugh foundations for research into educational issues.

In general, Hawai'i students have strong relationships with their faculty mentors as they get into their upperclassmen years — stronger than those of their peers on the Mainland, even though these bonds are weaker in their freshman year. It's these out-of-class experiences that create a good learning environment, said Kim.

"We have to go further in terms of academic challenge," Kim said. "We need to do some work especially to make our freshman level of academic challenge greater, with a more enriching extracurricular experience."

"By the time our students become seniors, their relationships with faculty are much stronger than at other comparable institutions. From our perspective, students learn more when they interact directly with faculty members, especially at a research university such as Manoa where people are engaged in world-class research.

"There's this myth that faculty don't have time for students and this is clear evidence debunking that myth."

Some of the broad key national findings from the 2002 report include:

• About 40 percent of all students spend 10 or fewer hours per week preparing for class, far less time than faculty members say is needed.
• Experiences with diversity heighten student engagement and overall satisfaction with college.
• International students are more engaged overall than American students.
• Women majoring in science, engineering and math study more and interact more with faculty members than do students in other majors.
• Participating in a learning community enhances the overall quality of the educational experience.
• Sixty-two percent of first-year students and 47 percent of seniors never worked with faculty members on activities other than coursework.
• Forty-one percent of first-year students and 26 percent of seniors never discussed ideas from their reading or classes with faculty members outside of class.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.