Report warns over 'lazy students'

Students in England are among the least hard-working in Europe, putting the reputation of the country's universities at risk, research has found.

The introduction of top-up tuition fees of £3,000 per year has led to a surge in undergraduates complaining they are not receiving "value for money".

The Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), which conducted the study of 15,000 students, warned the findings were potentially "very serious" for the future of universities.

The research came as hundreds of thousands of "freshers" embark on their first term of university life.

The report said students taking medicine and dentistry degrees studied for more than 35 hours per week on average, "the equivalent of a full-time job", the report said. "But for others, it resembles part-time employment."

Undergraduates on media studies courses averaged only about 20 hours of work each week. The figures included both teaching time and private study.

The report warned degrees from English universities, which are also shorter in length, may well be seen as inferior to courses elsewhere in Europe.

"There is real reason to doubt whether English degrees will be perceived as being of equivalent value to degrees from countries where the requirements on students are more onerous," the report said.

Students taking their first degree in Germany typically spend nearly 35 hours per week studying, and courses last about seven years. In Portugal, students typically put in about 40 hours per week. But in England, the average student spends just over 25 hours per week studying for a course that lasts about three years.

It will be "hard to counter" the "likely" response of a student that "English universities require less of their students than universities elsewhere in Europe", the report said. "There is bound to be increasing pressure on English universities to explain how their shorter, less intensive courses match those elsewhere in Europe."

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