Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Making college worthwhile

It's quiet around here right now. I live near the University of Wisconsin campus. I'm surrounded by student housing and about half of those in my building are undergraduates or graduate students. Commencement was last Sunday so many of those students are now gone. The UW has, in the not-so-distant past, earned a place on one or another of those lists of top party schools. Consequently, this finding in an article in The Washington Post surprised me:
University of Wisconsin. The Madison flagship has an outdated reputation as a party school. But survey data show that freshmen at Wisconsin study 20 hours a week, and seniors study 18 hours a week. I could not find a single other public university anywhere in the nation that performed as high on that measure.
The New York Times several weeks ago told parents of college age students that if you "Want Your College Student to Party Less? Pay Less."
...[T]he group of college students least likely to report engaging in risky behavior (drinking, binge drinking, marijuana use and smoking) were those who contributed the most, financially, to their own education. Those students were also more likely to identify strongly with their future occupational identity — the ultimate goal of their degree.
So, if you are self-sufficient and goal-oriented, perhaps you might consider the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin...

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