College Freshmen report drinking less- Focused on job prospects

Information was published at http://shine.yahoo.com/work-money/drinking-among-college-freshmen-hits-record-low-major-185900788.html. Communities invest a lot of time and money to educate our elementary and high school students. And we like to see that this investment in education put to use by graduates. Therefore, I was pleased to see the results of the "2012 Freshman Norms report," conducted by UCLA's Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP). Each year since 1966, the CIRP has surveyed college freshmen. The 2012 survey found that only 33 percent of college freshman reported drinking beer in 2012, down from 35.4 percent in 2011 and far lower than the 73.7 percent who were knocking back drinks in 1982, (when many of their own parents were in college). The 2012 survey gathered data from 192,912 first-time, full-time students at 283 four-year colleges and universities in the United States. It also found that an all-time high of 87.9 percent of freshman said that they were attending college "to be able to get a better job," a stark contrast to students in 1976, when just 67.8 percent of freshman said that job prospects played a part in their decision to go to college. "Students have figured out that increased lifetime earnings result from a college education," Sylvia Hurtado, director of the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies said in a statement. The John Baylor Test Program that we use at Bancroft-Rosalie tells students that a four year college graduate will earn $1.2 million more over their lifetime than a student with only a high school diploma. The urge to study may have started while today's freshmen were still in high school. The CIRP survey also found that just 13.7 percent of college freshmen said they spent six or more hours partying per week when they were seniors in high school, a dramatic drop from 63 percent in 1987, when the question was first asked. It is refreshing to see that students are making good choices.