College Students Spend More Time Drinking Than Studying

3/11/2009

At height of debate on college drinking, new study finds first-year students who use alcohol spend 10.2 hours a week drinking, compared to 8.4 hours studying.

SEATTLE, WA – March 11, 2009 – Outside The Classroom and NASPA–Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education announced today that, during the fall semester of 2008, first-year college students who used alcohol drank an estimated 10.2 hours per week, compared to studying only 8.4 hours per week. Students who drank represented 68.9% of the study sample, or 20,801 students altogether. Of these, 49.4% spent more time downing alcohol than they did studying. The estimated time spent drinking ranged from less than an hour to 51 hours per week. Researchers at Outside The Classroom, Inc., led by nationallyknown expert William DeJong, PhD, announced the results of their study to college and university student affairs officers attending the 2009 NASPA Annual Conference.

The data for the study was collected from 30,183 first-year students who took AlcoholEdu® for College, an online alcohol education course offered by Outside The Classroom. Students from 76 colleges and universities were administered a baseline survey prior to the administration of the course after the start of the fall 2008 semester. Drinkers were defined as those who reported consuming any alcohol in the past two weeks. The estimate of how much time first-year students spent studying was derived from several sources, including the Higher Education Research Institute’s annual survey report, The American Freshman.

“These findings, I believe, are the biggest wake-up call since the finding that 1,700 student deaths per year are due to alcohol,” said Brandon Busteed, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Outside The Classroom. “Parents are working hard to pay tuition bills, yet many of their children are out drinking instead of investing time in building their future. This is a threat to the core mission of higher education, and it calls into question whether faculty are demanding enough hard work from their students, and whether more college leaders should be redoubling their efforts to address this problem.“

Recent reports have shown that students study even less than in past decades, but this is the first study to estimate how much time freshmen spend drinking. For first-year students who drink, no other activity occupies nearly as much time as drinking. According to various studies, each week students spend an average of five hours exercising, four hours playing video games or networking online, and just over two hours working for pay.

“As student affairs professionals, we view the issue of college drinking as one of the biggest threats to our effectiveness as educators. Our hope is that this new finding will motivate all those within the academy, and even the larger community, to join us as we redouble our efforts to de-emphasize the role of alcohol in college life. Indeed, while comprehensive prevention programming has always been an imperative, it is clearly now more important than ever,” said Gwendolyn Jordan Dungy, NASPA Executive Director.

“From the broadest perspective of the challenges our country faces with alcohol use and abuse, there is no more important effort than our work to address college student drinking. The impact of this problem is immeasurable when we think of the lost potential of our best and brightest. My only hope is that these findings motivate us all to act decisively and comprehensively to realign our priorities. Drinking should never outweigh academic engagement on our nation’s campuses,” said Dr. Ting-Kai Li, recently retired Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and a faculty member of Duke University School of Medicine.

“I’m sure most Americans – and even most college students – will agree with me that having so many students drinking their way through college is an intolerable state of affairs,” said Busteed. “It’s time all of us who care about higher education refocus on our core mission of educating and preparing young adults to be our next generation of great minds, leaders, and contributors to society."

 To view the research findings, please visit: www.outsidetheclassroom.com/research/

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NASPA – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education is the leading voice for student affairs administration, policy, and practice, and affirms the commitment of the student affairs profession to educating the whole student and integrating student life and learning. With more than 11,000 members at 1,400 campuses, and representing 29 countries, NASPA is the foremost professional association for student affairs administrators, faculty, and graduate and undergraduate students. NASPA members are committed to serving college students by embracing the core values of diversity, learning, integrity, collaboration, access, service, fellowship, and the spirit of inquiry. For more information, please visit our website at www.naspa.org.

Outside The Classroom – For nearly a decade, Outside The Classroom has been committed to strengthening the field of alcohol prevention by providing institutional leaders and their students with the information needed to develop well-informed, cost-effective strategies for reducing alcohol-related risk and preventing harm. Today, the organization’s flagship educational program, AlcoholEdu® for College, is used on over 500 campuses and by 36% of all first-year students at America’s higher education institutions. In 2008, Outside The Classroom launched The Alcohol Prevention Coalition to take on the larger scope of the work – providing institution-wide solutions to the key challenges threatening effective alcohol prevention. All of Outside The Classroom’s programs are developed under the leadership of national prevention expert William DeJong, PhD. For more information please visit www.outsidetheclassroom.com.

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