College is a Full-Time Job

Many of my students come to college misunderstanding the designation “full-time student.” While the term seems to have something to do with financial aid eligibility or health insurance, it does not. (Those associations came after the phrase had already come into wide-spread use.) There is a formula that I have heard called the Princeton Rule. According to the Princeton Rule, college students (should) spend twice as many hours outside the classroom studying as they do inside the classroom learning in collaboration with their professors and peers.

Here’s how the Princeton Rule looks:

            If you are registered for 15 hours, you are probably spending 15 hours each week inside the classroom. Once you multiply those 15 hours by two (30 hours) to set your independent study time, and add it to the 15 hours that you spend attending class, you are supposed to spend approximately 45 hours each week on your “job”of being a full-time student.

 Many students at Miami Hamilton work part-time or full-time to help pay for college tuition, fees, and books, which is laudable. That part-time job, however, needs to come after your full-time job of classes. I have had many students tell me that they could not complete papers or assignments because they work, a situation to which I am sympathetic. I cannot, however, lower my standards or remove assignments to suit individual students. (If you had two full-time jobs, you would not tell one of your bosses that you just do not have time to work that job because you have another job and suggest that they go ahead and pay you anyway, even though you did not do the work.) All students must be held to the same standards because the courses, as I pointed out in the section on College Myths, require that students meet certain criteria, regardless of their other commitments.

 The comparison between college and a job is a common one, and it works. Most students are in college to prepare them for a job or, ideally, for a career. School is your full-time job, an apprenticeship or internship that will prepare you to work for pay.  

 Keep in mind that you did not come to college to stay the same. Ask yourself what is possible for you to contribute to your personal transformation.