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From USA Today: “College Freshmen Study Booze More Than Books.”
Well, no. The study found the opposite — that a majority of first-years who had drunk in the previous two weeks spent more time studying than drinking. It was a narrow majority, but a majority nonetheless.
And though it did find that those students who drank spent more time on average, drinking than studying, it also found that 30% of students didn’t drink at all.
If you factor that 30% into the study’s totals, you find that only a third of students surveyed spent more time drinking than studying, and that the average student surveyed spent an hour and fifteen minutes a week more time with the books than with a beverage.
One other thing. The study found that the average student spent 8.4 hours a week studying. But as the USA Today article notes way down at the bottom of the piece, that result is inconsistent with a National Study of Student Engagement, conducted last spring, that found that students spent an average of 13.2 hours a week prepping for class.
To summarize: The study found that 65% of college students spend more time studying than drinking, and that the average first-year spends seventy-five more minutes a week studying than drinking. The article itself suggests that the study may have underreported students’ study time by as much as five hours a week. And yet there’s that headline again … “College Freshmen Study Booze More Than Books.”
Nice work.
Update: I’ve taken a look at the actual “study.” It was put out by a company that offers online alcohol education programs to colleges, and based on the answers provided by students who participated in the company’s programs. Estimates of time spent studying were amalgamated from several different sources, and estimates of time spent drinking were derived from an odd and unnecessarily complicated formula — in neither case did the study rely on students’ self-reporting. This wasn’t an academic study, it was a marketing device.
Second update: Okay, this is turning into a series. I’ll link to follow-up posts here…
A new study of more than twenty thousand full-time faculty at American four-year colleges and universities reveals a professoriate that tilts left, but not at the expense of ideological diversity.
In the study, 55.8% of faculty surveyed described themselves as “liberal” or “far left,” as opposed to 44.3% who called themselves “middle of the road,” “conservative,” or “far right.”
These results are almost identical to those collected the last time this survey was conducted, three years ago. Other findings changed dramatically, however:
- 66.1% said they had a professional responsibility to “help students develop personal values,” an increase of 15.3 points since the previous study.
- 70.2% said the same of helping students to “develop moral character,” a 13.1 point gain.
- 75.2% said they work to “enhance students’ knowledge of and appreciation for other racial/ethnic groups,” a 17.6 point rise.
- 55.5% said they consider it “very important” or “essential” to foster “a commitment to community service” in their students, a 19.1 increase.
The Associated Student Government at Northwestern University has been busy this winter.
In recent weeks, ASG has gone live with four different online projects serving the student community — a ride share board, a ratings site for off-campus housing, a research assistance site, and a student guide to academic majors.
The new programs are part of a strategy to shift ASG’s emphasis toward student-directed projects, an ASG representative told the Daily Northwestern. The student government’s operations director estimates that the ride share program has already saved students $15,000 since it went live in early December.
Now, none of these projects stand at the cutting edge of radical activism, it’s true. But each is intended to make a positive practical difference in the lives of students at Northwestern, and several — I’m thinking specifically of the housing site and the academic majors guide — are designed to equalize information imbalances that put students at a disadvantage in dealing with other university community members.
Student services and student advocacy are too often treated as alternatives, or even opposites. In my experience, a strong student government is likely to be (or become) an activist student government, and serving students’ needs makes a student government stronger.
Two sociologists at the City University of New York have received a prestigious and lucrative award for their research into the effects of open admissions on students and colleges.
The professors, Paul Attewell and David Lavin, have been awarded the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education, which comes with a $200,000 prize.
Their research, a study of two thousand women students admitted to CUNY under open admissions in the 1970s, found that more than two-thirds had graduated, and that their time in college had improved their annual earnings by $5000 to $10000 a year. It also found that the women’s children were better educated than the children of similar women who had not attended college.
They presented their research in a 2007 book, Passing the Torch: Does Higher Education for the Disadvantaged Pay Off Across the Generations?
studentactivism.net 
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