I subscribe to a bunch of EurekAlert RSS feeds, including the “Education” feed, which could often be re-named “The Journal of Unsurprising Results.” Take, for example, today’s ground-breaking study, Male college students more likely than less-educated peers to commit property crimes, which comes complete with the subhead “Sociological research reveals paradox of higher education, crime”:
Sociologists at Bowling Green State University found that college-bound youth report lower levels of criminal activity and substance use during adolescence compared to non-college-bound youth. However, levels of drinking, property theft and unstructured socializing with friends increase among the college-bound after enrollment at a four-year university, and they surpass the rates of less-educated peers.
“College attendance is commonly associated with self-improvement and upward mobility, yet this research suggests that college may actually encourage, rather than deter, social deviance and risk-taking,” said Patrick M. Seffrin, the study’s primary investigator and a graduate student and research assistant in the department of sociology and the Center for Family and Demographic Research at Bowling Green State University.
I’m sort of baffled by this. I mean, the guy’s a graduate student– didn’t he have to go to college first? How can this result be surprising to anyone who has spent time on a college campus?
OK, it might seem surprising for a few seconds, if you have really hideous class biases and assume that anyone not going to college is a shiftless drunken imbecile living off welfare and street crime. But really, if you think about it for two seconds, this isn’t surprising at all.
High school students who don’t go on to college generally get jobs, and thus have relatively little free time for “unstructured socializing with friends.” This is in contrast to full-time college students, who usually manage to spend two, three or even four nights a week boozing it up.
I really hate the whole genre of “Oh my god! Do you know what college kids are doing?!?” stories.
I haven’t read the paper, but are you sure it’s saying that 18-21-year-olds in college engage in more illegal behavior than 18-21-year-olds not in college? I can imagine different interpretations of that brief press release that are more interesting (e.g. that the increase in rates of illegal behavior among 18-21-years-olds in college over 18-21-years-olds not in college surpasses the increase among 14-18-year-olds that are not college-bound over 14-18-year-olds that are), and of course how the rates change among the two groups may be interesting in and of itself.
Also, the grad student probably didn’t write the press release.
So Chad… are you saying that you shouldn’t run experiments if you’re pretty sure you know the result in advance?
Yes, and it’s been known for decades that serial killings in the USA diminish during major wars. The reasonable hypothesis is that those with an itch to kill without punishment become soldiers, and perhaps more likely to be decorated for their combat experience than the average soldier.
“Illegal behavior” is a very nonlinear interaction between the individual, her/his social network, and the laws of the State. All the components change over time. Given reasonable assumptions about feedback in the differential equations modeling this, I’d expect there to be chaotic phenomena.
But maybe chaos on the campus is the point of this study. I have a lifetime’s worth of stories (which keep popping up in my published science fiction and poetry) about the party excesses of my college days in the late 1960s and early 1970s, even at what ranks near the bottom of party schools. Caltech was traditionally almost as straight-laced as BYU, at the opposite end of the spectrum from the true Party Schools. Any personal comments here Chad, beyond what you’ve said before about beer and rugby?
So Chad… are you saying that you shouldn’t run experiments if you’re pretty sure you know the result in advance?
My complaint is more with the press release than the experiment. Hyping this as a “paradox” is just ridiculous– this really isn’t a surprising result if you know anything about college students.
A check for tuition and fees drops into the hopper followed by the price of books. What student overlooks the economic efficiency of stealing versus earning less taxation? What blue collar git is ignorant of Welfare? What corporate CEO refuses government subsidy?
What one man receives without effort is confiscated from another who labors. Take all you can, give nothing back. Waste not get not.
Counterargument is made with guns, edged weapons, and blunt trauma. Some folks dislike being robbed.
So, is Uncle Al in #5: “Counterargument is made with guns, edged weapons, and blunt trauma” advocating the following?
“Okay, everybody in this Registrar’s Office, nobody move and nobody’s going to get hurt. Just put a dozen unmarked Diplomas in this briefcase. I’ll fill them in later for me and my droogies here. The tution was bad, the textbook prices worse, but having to pay for college catalogs and student parking? That’s the last straw, mofo. It’s time that I start some serious diploma redistribution here, the same was that Robin Hood did, or Jesse James did in helping poor farmers whose property was about to be confiscated by greedy bankers. All power to the people! From each according to his/her prerequisies; to each according to his/her employment curriculum vitae needs!”
I am shocked! Shocked I tell you about this surprising behavior. I remember when I was doing my degrees, that weekends were spent quietly in the library or in the lab. Everybody worked studiously and were quite industrious. There was perhaps a few Saturday evenings with the ponies after which we would retire for a small glass of chablis on a yacht while listening to a sorority harpischord recital and discussing the latest stock market trends with my and my father’s buddies. This binge drinking and partying was simply unheard of, well, except for a few Friday evenings. Well, o.k., many of them (except during ion beam time). Saturday nights too I suppose. Chem labs with hangovers were pretty brutal too, from what I can recall. Don’t totally recall how the apartment patio furniture ended up in the pool. Man, now I’m not even sure how I graduated…
🙂
Re #6: How does that differ from social promotion?
CUNY + Jews + anti-Semitism = 12 Nobel Laureates
CUNY + (Blacks + Browns) + (massive Federal imposition) = diversity
Res ipsa loquitur. It’s not that heteronormatism problematizes homosocial othering. If you lose $20 on the play don’t bet the same outcome on the video replay.
depp=true
And this is why I sometimes feel nothing in common with my college-educated peers. You see, I had to work full-time – over 60 hours a week – all the way through college. So no, no boozing it up for me during college. I didn’t even start drinking regularly until well after college.
You know, this may make me sound unbearably boring, but while I heard of a few big parties in college, I never went to any parties in college that involved alcohol. I did go to some parties, but most of them were very sheltered because my social network was full of mormons. (I’m so very glad I escaped that, by the way). This makes me think that it is entirely possible that the person who wrote this may not be deserving of the criticism you’re giving them. It is entirely possible that they were clueless about college parties and misbehavior of fellow students. Essentially, maybe they lived in a bubble :).
When you strip away all the verbose pseudo intellectual dribble what this guy is saying is, “college males get drunk then mess shit up.” Not groundbreaking at all; in fact it is obvious as hell.
I should feel boring, but I don’t. Hmm.