{"id":2803,"date":"2008-08-02T10:43:42","date_gmt":"2008-08-02T10:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/08\/02\/breaking-news-college-students\/"},"modified":"2008-08-02T10:43:42","modified_gmt":"2008-08-02T10:43:42","slug":"breaking-news-college-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/08\/02\/breaking-news-college-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking News: College Students Drink"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>, which comes complete with the subhead “Sociological research reveals paradox of higher education, crime”:<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m sort of baffled by this. I mean, the guy’s a graduate student– didn’t he have to go to college first<\/strong>? How can this result be surprising to anyone who has spent time on a college campus?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I really hate the whole genre of “Oh my god! Do you know what college kids are doing?!?” stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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”:… Continue reading Breaking News: College Students Drink<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}