Whoever wants to improve the performance of university students needs to schedule morning classes a few hours later. `More students will show up and they will also be able to focus better,' predicts Victor Spoormaker, sleep researcher at the University of Utrecht.
On average, students sleep more than an hour too little each night. Students need about eight hours of sleep, but they get only six or seven hours. `This is caused primarily by their evening program,' suspects an empathetic Spoormaker. `They go to bed late and have to get up early, not to mention the effects of their alcohol intake: it makes their sleep fragmented and less deep.'
Between 1985 and 1995, students started sleeping about a half-hour less. The consequences are dire. `Just consider: one in four traffic accidents is related to sleep deprivation,' Spoormaker says. `Furthermore, in the long term, people's productivity decreases with a lack of sleep. It is all very clear, but no one is doing anything about it. Everyone just laughs about it, as if it were all a big joke.'
Students are a vulnerable group, because about half the adolescents are night people. That means that their day rhythm has shifted later compared to other people. In some cases, that improves later, but one in three people will always have trouble with a nine-to-five job, Spoormaker predicts: `They won't be able to open their eyes before three cups of coffee.'
Trans. Jeroen Latour
