A NUMBER OF Stanford faculty members share Dement's concern that students' poor sleep habits are a widespread and serious problem. In 2013, when the registrar's office introduced a proposal to expand the standard course schedule by starting morning classes a half hour earlier, at 8:30 a.m., students thought it was a bad dream. But several professors backed them in opposing the plan.
Physics professor Kathryn Moler, '88, PhD '95, says the gravity of the issue hit home for her teaching Physics 61, an advanced freshman course, at 9 a.m. Even though the class is filled with "a very serious, very studious group of students," she notes, it's obvious by the third week that "they still just find it hard to get up."
Students performing well by all other measures, she says, have even slept through alarms on the day of an exam.
"What many people don't realize is that adolescents need more sleep than children, and yet they get less," says psychiatry and behavioral sciences professor David Spiegel. "[Sleep- deprived students] don't function well cognitively, and it's not good for their health either."
Because young people are unlikely to prioritize sleep on their own, Spiegel is passionate about the university being proactive on the issue. "Teenagers are always 15 going on 35, but they're a precious group of people who are in our supervision."
After much discussion, the revised course-scheduling plan approved in February, which will go into effect for the 2015-16 academic year, means most undergraduates will never have to take a class starting earlier than 9 a.m. unless they choose to.
Mike Antonucci is a senior writer at Stanford.
