“As for Stanford engineering students stuck using electronic texts, the debate over a bookless library is made moot by recent reports that college students are studying only half as much as they did in the nineteen-sixties.”
The Book Bench: The New Yorker
I studied only about half as much during the 1960s.
Maybe guys studied harder in the sixties so they wouldn’t get drafted. Didn’t you have to be in the top half of your class to keep a student deferment? I remember guys appealing to the girls to do badly so the guys could stay. I don’t know any girls who did that — it would have handicapped them too much later.
I graduated in four years (with one credit to spare) and Selective Service wasn’t a problem until after graduation. I taught for a while, went to graduate school and then got a parental deferment before I was 23.
I was accepted into the Naval Aviator Officer Candidate program during my senior year of college. I’ve always been proud of that; it was a grueling application process.
But when they called to tell me I’d been accepted and could enlist, I turned the Navy down. I’ve revisited that decision a few times since.