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This student gets it
Yesterday, the New York Times ran this refreshing dose of common sense from an MIT student on its letters page:
The solution to binge drinking problems on campuses is simple: college curriculums need to be more rigorous. If college programs required their students to put in a significant number of hours per week doing work related to their classes, campus drinking would soon find itself limited to one or two nights a week.Furthermore, those few nights a week would be more moderate, since the students would drink knowing that they needed to get up in the morning and keep hacking away at that thermodynamics problem set.
I suspect that one of the main reasons students who aren't in college drink less than college students is that they have to get up in the morning and go to work at a real job, where they are accountable for their behavior.
We couldn't have said it better ourselves. If universities were demanding more from their students, we wouldn't have half of the college freshmen who drink reporting having spent more time drinking than studying. One place trustees can start is cracking down on grade inflation, and as the student points out, the curriculum also deserves attention. ACTA will release a brand-new report on that issue this fall.
Posted by Sandra E. Czelusniak on July 09, 2009 at July 9, 2009 05:11 PM
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Comments
This makes too much sense. Does it take an MIT student to come up with this observation?
Posted by: Doug at August 4, 2009 09:07 PM