That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of University Success

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind being successful during your university experience. 

Hi. My name is Oliver Carlson, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. Well, first of all, I'll start with an apology. We've kind of been off for a couple of weeks. I'll be honest, as usual, it's just the academic life getting in the way of the podcast. I had to do some traveling for work and was in Europe for a while and right after I got back, Matt had to go to Europe for a conference and now I'm actually driving my son across the country to go to university. So life's gotten a bit busy and it's making it hard to get content up for you. But I'm here. I'm recording actually from a hotel room in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan as I drive across the country. And I just thought, you know, I miss making podcasts.

so I thought I'd put something up. Anyway, I'm taking a slightly different spin on this one. It's a question that actually came up a couple of times. I've heard it before, and I've always been asked to give some thoughts on it. So I'm not going to go hardcore into the brain on this one. I'm going to answer a slightly different question and give you my thoughts on this, my personal thoughts on this, as someone that's been a professor for quite some time.

and basically being in university most of their adult life in one way or another. So the question is this, you know, do people actually learn at university, right? You know, why do some people succeed and some people do not? And I actually get asked that a lot because as a professor, they want to know my thoughts. You know, like why do some students do well, some do not? you know, what about the university itself? It seems like, you know, is this place really designed to, you know, make learning a focus or a priority? So on today's podcast, you know, learning at universities, what's really going on? So I've broken this down into two parts. The first part is

why do some people succeed at university and some do not? Well, probably the biggest thing I notice is that there's a change in the structure of the learning environment. You know, when students are in high school, in most high schools, not all, typically it's a fairly structured learning environment. And what I mean by that is the students have very defined expectations every day. You know, here's homework to work on, we'll check it tomorrow. You know, you move through content in a way that's very structured. You know, the classrooms are generally a lot smaller,

and there's a lot of things going on to promote learning. That's not typically how university classrooms work. You know, in a typical university class, you don't check homework, right? Students show up for lectures, they're given some content, and then in a month they have a midterm. Now, in some courses there are assignments that are due on a regular basis, but it's very different than the typical high school classroom where there's assessment or feedback almost every day. And that is a change in the structure of the environment. And some

students struggle with that because it's so different. They have all this free time. The onus is on them to go to class. The onus is on them to get the work done. And sometimes they just get lost in that. And I see that a lot as a professor, and it's hard because if you have a class of 200 students, there's only so much you can do, right? It's very hard to apply what you might do in a high school classroom. The second reason I think some students struggle at university and some do not is learning how to learn, right? In high schools, we typically spoon-feed students, and I say this as a former high school teacher, we tell them, well, this is exactly what you need to know. And this is what's important, this is what isn't.

But in universities, we don't do that to the same extent. All right, we don't identify that you need to read the textbook, right? You need to go in there and you need to figure out what matters and what doesn't. You have to tie it back to your classroom notes. You have to learn how to make notes. You have to learn how to, you know, find additional resources. So it's learning how to learn. Whereas in high school, I feel that the teachers,

do such a good job in general of setting up the expectations and what you need to know that you don't have to really learn how to learn on your own. You just sort of got to go along with it. So it's that change in the structure of the environment along with this idea of learning how to learn, which is really crucial because a successful university student knows how to learn. It's probably the one thing that you get out of your degree, if nothing else is you know how to learn something new. Now, there's an obvious one, which are the social distractions, which is a real thing. All right.

In university, you know, to avoid all of the opportunities to have fun is very challenging. You know, I'm not going to go through my personal university experience. That would be a completely different podcast. But the idea of social distractions, which are tough, you know, as you get older, you have a lot more autonomy to make choices. So, you know, it's learning to avoid those social distractions, or at least avoid them sometimes, which can be challenging. And the last one I'll say might be a bit controversial. But as a professor, I really wonder if, should everyone really go to university? We live in a world where we sort of set up that expectation. Everyone should go

to university. But is that truly a real thing? There are lots of other careers out there that might be better suited for some individuals than others. Now, should everyone have the right to go to university? Of course they should. If you want to go to university, you should go to university. But I feel that we should promote more other opportunities that are out there. You know, I'm fairly confident that my plumber makes more money than I do. And it's an excellent career. He has a great life. I was recently in Sam and R&BC. That's where I went to high school. I visited a couple friends and some of them have great careers there and they never went to university and they have happy lives. And I really think that's a true statement. Every year we graduate hundreds upon

hundreds of psychology students, but do we need that many people with psychology degrees? And I know that's a bit controversial, but it's just an opinion. That one's not grounded in neuroscience, but it is a thought that I have and I think about a lot. So why do some people succeed at university and some do not? A change in the structure of the environment, all right? Figuring out how to play the university game, which is considerably different than the high school game. Learning how to learn.

How do you learn on your own without a teacher giving you the things that you need to know? Avoiding social distractions. That's a tough one. You know, I'm not perfect. I get distracted by social things too, but it's learning when to say no, which some young I'll struggle with. And last but not, at least, you know, that big question, is university the right thing for you? All right. That's one everyone has to answer individually. Now, I'm going to take this a level further, and I'm going to critique universities myself.

As a professor, I've been a professor at two different universities, Dalhousie and the University of Victoria. I was a postdoc and I taught at University of British Columbia. course, being a student for a long time. And as someone whose primary expertise is in the neuroscience of learning, I would say that universities in general aren't designed as good learning environments. So another reason some people struggle at university is that the university itself is poorly designed for learning. Number one on this list is the idea of lecturing. We know that lecturing is the least effective way to teach content. We know that. There's tons of scientific research that shows that. Yet in the vast majority of university classrooms, we'd lecture. All right?

And it's the worst way to teach content to people. Yet we do. Now, part of this, because I do lecture occasionally, actually most of my classrooms, I do something very different. But those are people that lecture you might be forced to you know back when I was teaching classes of 300 students sometimes you have to lecture because there's nothing else but in general we should be avoiding lecturing and coming up with better ways to teach and the problem there is class size which is a budget issue so if I you know could redesign universities one I would fund them more and the reason I would fund them more is to bring down class sizes and therefore we could get away from lecturing. So sometimes people fail at universities because lecturing is a bad way to teach.

And in another environment, they might thrive. It's just the lecturing system isn't for them. Another one that sort of irritates me is there are tons and tons of research out there that talks about the length of class and how long people can pay attention. You know, in my own university, we have some classes that meet for 50 minutes, some that meet for an hour and 20 minutes, and some that meet for three hours. Now, we know that three-hour classes don't work. Like, we know that. Students learn a lot less, all right, but we still offer them. We even know that hour and 20-minute classes aren't as effective as 50-minute classes.

All right. So basically, you get the same number of hours. You either get three, 50 minutes or two-hour 20s. but we know 350s is better. So just the way we design our classes is tough. Now, again, this isn't the fault of university administrators because there are budgetary concerns that are there. And with unlimited money, I imagine we'd do this differently.

But the actual length of our classes sometimes hinders us. Like one that I'll never forget is this idea of the Copernican system. I heard about this in a high school a long time ago, but you basically take one class all morning and one class in the afternoon. You do that for a few months and then you flip to two different classes. And that, you know, from a neuroscience of learning perspective, that's complete insanity. All right. I don't mind saying it.

It is. So that's a problem too. And last but not least, and this might throw a lot of people, but is teaching experience? I'd like to say I'm a reasonable university instructor. My teacher ratings seem to be reasonably good. I'm trying to be a bit modest there. But when I have the advantage that I was a high school teacher, I was actually trained to teach.

But a lot of people that are professors have never taught before. They get their job as a professor and they've never taught a single class. Now, luckily, universities are really working on this one. At the University of Victoria, we have a teacher in learning center. so if someone's never, you know, taught before, they get support, right? They can go there and talk to someone who's an expert in teaching and learn about how to teach. All right. So the universities are working on that, but in general, you know, people that, university professors might have zero teaching experience. And as a result, they struggle teaching in the classroom. So again,

this sets us up for universities not being an optimal place to learn. Why is that? The lecture method being preferred. Sometimes that's beyond control, but we know lecturing is bad. Class length. Sometimes class lengths are way too long, and people really struggle with that. And last but not least, the people teaching might not have any teaching experience, which of course impacts the students. So those are my thoughts on why some people succeed at university and some do not. Some of it's on the university itself, some of it's more

about the change of environment and some of it's on the student in question. Hopefully you found that interesting. I get asked that question a lot so I thought I would answer it and hopefully that answer is useful. Anyway, a few things before I sign off, don't forget the website, that neuroscience guy.com

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Coming to you from a hotel room in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, my name is Olive Krig Olson, and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another episode of the podcast.