April 3, 2016

(Educators)"Right now, private rankings like U.S. News & World Report puts out each year...it encourages a lot of colleges to focus on ways to - - how do we game the numbers?"

This comment from President Obama, its contorted grammar aside, hints at a critical and hidden reality.

Many college policies, procedures and practices are designed solely to influence U.S. News rankings, not to improve education. Meanwhile, the U.S. News rankings fail to take many things into account that profoundly affect education and the overall college experience.

According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, "college presidents agree that binge drinking is the most serious problem on campus." NIH data underscore the fallout, noting "about 25 percent of college students report academic consequences of their drinking including missing classes, falling behind, doing poorly on exams or papers and receiving lower grades overall."

Almost 2,000 college students die each year from alcohol-related injuries, nearly 700,000 are assaulted by another student who has been drinking, and more than 97,000 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape.

At many schools, binge drinking -- having five or more drinks for a male and four or more for a female within two hours - is becoming the norm.

A Harvard survey at 120 campuses revealed 44 percent of students engaged in binge drinking (known in certain contexts as "pre-gaming") in the previous two weeks.

At Princeton, the top U.S. News ranked college, university policy "prohibits the consumption and serving of alcoholic beverages by and to persons under 21." Enforcement is another matter, based on a Princeton 2011 survey that revealed 73 percent of students had recently pre-gamed, up from 67 percent in 2008.

A few colleges are actually doing something about this. Following alleged recent sexual misconduct at two fraternities, Brown banned alcoholic events in residential areas, and Dartmouth recently banned liquor with more than 15 percent alcohol from its campus.