Having campus wide deadlines that enforce student work-life balance is necessary to encourage students to spend time on their personal lives. For many adults, the workday ends at 5:00 PM and they have the evenings to spend with their friends and families. Enforcing a similar deadline on campus would promote students to spend their evenings on non-school related activities. They would have to spend the day(s) leading up to the deadline working on the assignment. 

Before electronic submissions were an option, college students turned in assignments during class. This policy was largely in place due to convenience, the students didn’t have to find the professor after class and the policy was clear. Due to technology, most deadlines are at night. Many of these learning management systems, such as blackboard used by UMBC, have 11:59 PM as a deadline preprogrammed into them. This means that when a professor goes to select a due date, 11:59 PM is the automatic time given for the assignment to be due. This policy does not align with many professional standards, such as business hours, and tells students that “burning the midnight oil” is acceptable. 

Having a work-life balance in college is important to maintain healthy boundaries. College students have numerous commitments both within and outside of the classroom. Having balance is essential in reducing the likelihood of becoming overwhelmed and therefore developing feelings of stress. Managing a stable work-life balance is more difficult for students who work while simultaneously enrolled in classes. They have more tasks to complete which consequently takes away more of their free time. Those who cannot obtain this balance may become frustrated that they are struggling. When students have poor work life balance it increases the symptoms of anxiety and depression. A reason for this results from them having to address that they are not currently meeting all of their commitments, both social and academic. 

Schools who use online learning platforms, such as Blackboard at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), can see even worse levels of work-life balance because of the at-home accessibility to assignments and class content. Students can experience higher levels of stress when this is the case due to feelings of stress surrounding schoolwork spilling over into their private personal time. 

The American College Health Association undergraduate survey, that UMBC students participate in, found that over fifty percent of students report struggling with procrastination. Of students who suffer from procrastination, 67.6% find that it negatively impacted their academic performance. Overall, students who procrastinate see reductions in their undergraduate academic success. Having more time to complete an assignment has been linked to higher rates of procrastination. Longer deadlines can lead students to believe that an assignment is harder to complete than it actually is. This means that they are more likely to procrastinate since the perceived difficulty level, and stress, is high. Having struggles academically in college can lead to higher levels of anxiety and depression. Consequently, students feel that suffering from anxiety, stress, and depression further reduce academic performance. This is ultimately a feedback loop where undergraduate students can not come out on top without change. Reducing procrastination opportunities can help students do better academically and improve mental health. 

Encouraging Participation

Professors could be encouraged to participate in this intervention through monetary incentivisation in the form of a free parking permit, which is a $100 value per semester. Using parking services to incentivize interventions is not unfamiliar to UMBC. During the Fall 2023 semester they ran a program called Food for Fines, where donating 5 items to Retriever Essentials lowered a parking ticket into a warning. Following the Diffusion of Innovation theory, once we get enough professors participating in this innovation it will become the new norm at the tipping point.

Example of Pre-Semester Survey for Participating Students 

References

American College Health Association. (2023). Undergraduate Student Reference Group. https://www.acha.org/documents/ncha/NCHA-III_SPRING_2023_UNDERGRAD_REFERENCE_GROUP_EXECUTIVE_SUMMARY.pdf 

Anwer, S., Manzar, M. D., Alghadir, A. H., Salahuddin, M., & Abdul Hameed, U. (2020). Psychometric Analysis of the Perceived Stress Scale Among Healthy University Students. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment, 16, 2389–2396. https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S268582

Due Date Image. (n.d.). Knights of Columbus. Retrieved from https://uknight.org/CouncilSite/index.asp?CNO=6828&DATE=1/7/2023. 

Friendly Organics. (n.d.). Procrastination Image. Retrieved from https://www.friendlyorganicscanada.ca/2020/09/the-psychological-origins-of-procrastination-with-help-to-overcome-procrastination-in-the-future/. 

Gbur, Markus (2013) Effects of Blackboard on the work-life balance of students and lecturers. University of Twente Student Theses. Retrieved from https://essay.utwente.nl/64026/ 

Goselin, G. M., & Rickert, N. P. (2022). Mental Health Symptoms Predicting American College Students’ Academic Performance: The Moderating Role of Peer Support. Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, 27(4), 297–305. https://doi.org/10.24839/2325-7342.JN27.4.297

Meng Zhu, Yang Yang, Christopher K Hsee, The Mere Urgency Effect, Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 45, Issue 3, October 2018, Pages 673–690, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucy008

Mofatteh, M. (2021). Risk factors associated with stress, anxiety, and depression among university undergraduate students. AIMS Public Health, 8(1), 36–65. https://doi.org/10.3934/publichealth.2021004

PublicDomainInvectors. (2023). Work Life Balance Image. Retrieved from https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Work-life-balance/90977.html. 

Roberti, J., Harrington, L., & Storch, E. (2006). Scales - Laboratory for the study of stress, immunity, and disease - department of psychology - carnegie Mellon University. Scales - Laboratory for the Study of Stress, Immunity, and Disease - Department of Psychology - Carnegie Mellon University. https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/psychology/stress-immunity-disease-lab/scales/index.html 

​​Tice, D., & Baumeister, R. (1997, November). Longitudinal Study of Procrastination, Performance, Stress, and Health: The Cost and Benefits of Dawdling . SageJournals . https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00460.x 

Tisocco, F., & Liporace, M. F. (2023). Structural Relationships Between Procrastination, Academic Motivation, and Academic Achievement Within University Students: A Self-determination Theory Approach. Innovative Higher Education, 48(2), 351–369. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-022-09622-9

UMBC. (n.d.). Welcome to parking services - Food For Fines. UMBC. https://parking.umbc.edu/