Medary.com

A Northern Arizona University professor goes native, enrolls as an undergraduate to find out how today's students live:

(Northern Arizona University professor Cathy) Small said she found that students downplayed publicly the effort they put into assigned reading or papers, but when interviewed, many said they were interested in their course work.

Her surveys also found that only about a third of what students were talking and thinking about outside of class was based on their course work.

That finding has led Small to change her coursework to better connect to the real world and to skip reading assignments that don't have a direct purpose.

Part of the trick to college life, she learned from good students, was being able to quickly decipher what work needed to be done and what could be skipped. Those management skills helped students balance classes, part-time work and involvement in volunteer or professional groups, Small said.

If professors are this out-of-touch with how their students on the same campus are living, how well do they understand what goes on in "the Real World" outside academia?