Lectures? No, I am a humanities student

Humanities students spend only between one and two hours a workday on lectures and seminars. In contrast, health and pharmaceutical science students are in lecture halls and classes more than twice as much time, in the upper part of the 2-4 hours range.

This is one of the conclusions that can be drawn from the University Post’s ‘Your Typical Day’ survey of daily routines.

A female international exchange student of the Humanities, who is critical of her class workload, exemplifies the trend for humanities with a bland statement in the surveys’ comment field: »There are not enough lectures and tutorials and not enough workload. I am bored«.

Read main article: Here is your typical day.

Reading textbooks, writing papers

To top this, humanities, social science and law students spend less time (somewhere between the categories zero to 0-1 hours a day) doing group work than students of the natural and health sciences, with the pharmaceutical students reporting an average of one to two hours a day on group work on average.

So what are the humanities and social science students doing instead? The next categories may provide the clue:

Humanities and social science students spend their hours reading academic texts for class, and writing academic papers. The humanities and social science students read academic texts on average somewhere at the lower end of 2-4 hours a day. They write papers about an hour a day.

Pharma students work hardest

So who are the student workhorses?

Pharmaceutical students seem to spend more hours than anyone doing academic stuff. They spend an average of 2-4 hours in lectures and classes, 1-2 hours in group work, 1-2 hours writing academic papers, the upper range of 1-2 hours reading academic for class.

It will come as no surprise that the pharma students appear to have less time than other students for concerts, films, chatting with friends, reading for fun, hobbies, leisure activities and volunteer work.

Schism between the book and the lab

The contrast between humanities and social science students on the one hand, and natural and health sciences student on the other, confirms a trend that was also found in an earlier University Post survey of PhDs.

Here there was also sharp contrast between the work routines of humanities and social sciences on the one hand, and the natural and health sciences on the other.

While humanities and social science PhDs spent more time on their own, often working from home, natural and health sciences PhDs spent more time working with colleagues.

miy@adm.ku.dk

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