A NEW SURVEY of three thousand students from Ireland’s seven universities has shown that a third of students only go to half of their timetabled lectures – and that about the same amount study for fewer than five hours a week.

The report, compiled by UCD but also surveying students from Trinity, Dublin City University, NUI Galway, NUI Maynooth, NUI Cork and the University of Limerick, also found that students who were the children of university graduates were more likely to be diligent about attending their classes.

The students surveyed did say, however, that they were more likely to study in the latter stages of their degrees, and particularly in final year, when the grades won in exams counted towards the final degree grade earned by a student.

The study concluded that students would be more likely to attend classes or be more diligent in study if they were ‘incentivised’ to do so over the entire duration of their course.

Gary Redmond of the Union of Students in Ireland said that semesterisation, which has been adopted in UCD and Trinity, would help to address the problem, as it was built around a model of more continuous assessment which stopped students from having to cram at the end of an academic year.

The third-level year gets underway in some colleges today, with first year orientation in UCD beginning next week. The bulk of Ireland’s universities welcome their new students at the end of the month.