Band 8+: Many students find it harder to study when they are at university or college than when they were at school. Why is this? What can be done to solve the problem? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

These days, a university education is considered to be much more difficult than a school one. The main reason for this is that universities and colleges imply that students should be autonomous compared to how they studied before. However, to help students transition smoothly to a university workload, academic skills should be taught in high school.

Why many students struggle to study at university has two main causes. One reason is the change in educational approach. Unlike school, where teachers pay close attention to students’ progress and usually provide detailed feedback, university professors are rarely involved in the educational process. This means that students have to study autonomously, read an excessive amount of literature, and write numerous course papers on their own, which may be harder than at school, especially when they have no prior experience of this.

Another key reason is that time-management skills have not been formed yet, and usually first-year students lag behind and they are overwhelmed with the amount of information and classes, not knowing how to organise their time. During school, they hardly need time-management skills, as they have a similar number of classes every day, often without much homework or papers to write. However, there are a couple of ways these issues could be tackled. In order to ease this tension, high school students need to form academic skills before applying to university. At the age of approximately 16, soon-to-be university students have to practise their academicskills by reading more research papers and learning basic statistics. This will help to alleviate stress when writing course papers later. In addition, knowing basic time-management tools, such as the pomodoro principle, will later help students to be more focused on tasks and get their homework done faster, because at school they have more free time, and spend in scrolling social media. This habit should be eliminated in high school, which would make students likely to be more focused at universities.

In conclusion, the change in the style of studying from schools to universities puts many students under pressure as they lack core skills, often leaving them overwhelmed, but this issue can be resolved by teaching them critical academic and time-management skills before being admitted to university.