Why Are Students More Engaged in College Than High School? A High School Teacher’s Observation
Last month I was waiting in line for a coffee before first period, when someone tapped my shoulder. It was Lila, who’d been in my 11th grade English class two years prior, and I barely recognized her at first. Back in high school, she wore the same oversized gray hoodie every day, kept her phone tucked under her desk during lectures, and turned in extra credit exactly never. Now she had a backpack plastered with genetics lab stickers, was holding a dog-eared ecology textbook, and asked how my current classes were going before I could even ask her how college was.
Ten minutes later, as we leaned against the pastry case waiting for our drinks, she said something that stuck with me. She’s a pre-med bio major now, takes 15 credits, stays two hours after lab every week to help with an undergraduate research project on pollinator decline, and can’t remember the last time she skipped a class. “I don’t get it myself,” she said, laughing. “I never did half the work I was supposed to here. Now I’m staying up till 1 a.m. working on stuff that’s not even for a grade. Why is that?”
That question lines up with what I’ve noticed from dozens of former students who’ve come back to visit over the years: almost every kid who was checked out, distracted, or just plain unengaged in high school shows up differently once they get to college. It’s not that every college student is engaged 100% of the time, of course— I hear plenty about 8 a.m. classes skipped for extra sleep and half-hearted group projects. But the baseline is different. Most people care more, show up more, put in more effort when they’re in college than they ever did in high school.
A lot of parents and even other teachers I talk to assume this is just maturity. Kids grow up, they get more responsibility, they finally care about their future. But that’s never felt right to me, not after watching hundreds of kids cycle through my classroom. The difference isn’t just age. It’s structure and choice, two things that are far more abundant in college than most high schools.
In high school, the vast majority of a student’s schedule is decided for them. They need four years of English, three years of math, a certain number of PE credits to graduate, and that’s that. Even electives are often limited by what the school can staff, or what fits into their required block schedule. Most of the work they do is for a grade that will go on a transcript to get them into college— it’s a stepping stone, not the thing itself. In college, they pick their major. They build their own schedule. Every class they take ties back to something they chose to pursue. They (or their family, or their loans) paid for every credit, so skipping a class isn’t just a detention or a talk from a counselor— it’s tangible lost time and money that they’re on the hook for. That changes how you show up.
After talking to Lila that day, I started testing small changes in my own classes to see if we can bring a little of that college-style engagement to high school, without throwing out all the district requirements. The easiest shift I made was giving kids one small choice per unit. Instead of assigning every reading response prompt, I let them write half of their responses on any topic that connects the book we’re reading to something they care about. For the end-of-unit research project, I let one third of the class pick their own topic instead of choosing from my pre-made list. It’s a tiny change, takes me almost no extra work, and I’ve already seen a difference.
Javi, a kid I have this year who sits in the back and rarely turns in homework on time, loves fixing old motorcycles after school. When our research project unit rolled around a few weeks after I talked to Lila, he told me he didn’t like any of the topics on my list. I told him to pick something about motorcycles that mattered to him, and he ended up writing a 12-page paper on how 1970s changes in government safety regulation transformed motorcycle design. He brought in an old 1968 helmet he’d restored to show the class during his presentation, and he got a B+— his first grade above a C in my class all semester.
What can parents do at home? It doesn’t have to be big. Instead of asking “did you finish your homework?” every night, try asking “what’s one assignment you did this week that felt like it mattered to you?” Just asking the question normalizes that it’s okay to notice when work feels pointless, and it helps kids start to connect their school work to their own interests. If your kid complains that most of their classes are boring, don’t jump in to tell them they just have to push through. Instead, help them carve out 30 minutes a week to work on something that’s theirs— whether that’s practicing coding, walking dogs at the local shelter, or fixing up old bikes. That small bit of ownership keeps them engaged in something while they work through the required high school structure, and it gives them a clearer idea of what they want to pursue once they get to college.
I still have to follow state curriculum guidelines. I still have to require all my students to read certain books and turn in certain assignments. There’s no way to make every single high school class feel like a college elective that a kid chose for themselves. But talking to Lila that day reminded me that disengagement in high school isn’t usually a character problem. It’s a context problem. Most kids want to engage with something that matters to them. They just have to wait until college to get the chance, a lot of the time.
Javi stopped by my room after school last week to tell me he’s added a mechanical engineering workshop at the local community college to his schedule next semester. He’s never talked about college as anything more than something he “might do” before. It’s too early to tell how it will go, but it’s a start.
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