On the Campus

Emerging Adulthood and Adolescent Life

by Alan Reifman, Ph.D.

Universities, Community Development, and Service Learning

Many U.S. universities are located in older, inner-city communities, where problems such as blighted buildings, abandoned spaces, and crime can make the areas unattractive to prospective students and faculty. Read More

Academic Dishonesty: Prevalent but Preventable

Universities around the country are taking various measures to promote academic integrity, amidst studies reporting high rates of self-reported cheating among high school and college students (academic integrity in faculty members' research is also an important issue, as evidenced by scandals over falsified data, but that topic is beyond the scope of the present piece). Read More

Looking Back at a Scandal-Plagued Year in College Athletics

As I did a year ago, I'm again using January 1 -- the traditional peak of the football bowl season -- to reflect on the state of college sports. We've had major scandals in college sports for several generations (the college-basketball point-shaving scandals of the late 1940s and early 1950s perhaps being the best known historically). Read More

Grade Inflation: What Is It and How Are Schools Combating It?

Grade inflation. Whereas price inflation refers to the same amount of money having less purchasing power now than in the past, the idea of grade inflation seems to work in the opposite direction. The same quality of schoolwork (if that could be objectively verifed) is likely to have its grade-earning power get better over time. Read More

Serious Psychological Disorders in College Students

Following up on last month's column about psychological stress on college campuses, this month's examines more serious cases of psychological disorder. Alarming headlines have appeared in recent years regarding college students' (and other young persons') mental health: Read More

Stress in College Students

Psychological stress among college students has been getting a lot of attention recently, thanks to articles this year in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and Inside Higher Ed. Research on student stress goes back at least half a century, to David Mechanic's 1962 book Students Under Stress, which was on graduate students. Read More

How Fraternities and Sororities Impact Students (Or Do They?)

Right around now is the start of the academic year at American universities. Read More

Dormitory Life: A Microcosm of Young-Adult Development?

At many universities, August brings the ritual of "move-in day," when freshman students and their parents arrive at campus residence halls, boxes in tow. Beyond just providing a roof over students' heads, however, dormitories increasingly are being seen as a laboratory of human behavior during emerging adulthood -- the transition process to full adulthood. Read More

Summer School and Student Learning

We're now officially into summer and summer-school courses are in session around the country. I took a lot of summer courses back when I was a college student and I've taught several times during summer as a professor. Read More

Harry Potter, Quidditch, and the American University

With the regular academic year over at most American universities and students either taking a summer vacation or attending summer school, I thought I'd turn to some lighter subjects. This month, I discuss the cultural impact of the British youth novel and film series Harry Potter (written by J.K. Rowling) on the contemporary U.S. college campus. Read More

Are College Final Exams Disappearing?

Visit a college campus at the right time in May (or December) and you're likely to see throngs of students converging on the library. Read More

College Students' Financial Literacy and Behavior

Every April, economic and financial matters come to the fore of millions of Americans' minds, as tax-filing time rolls around. Accordingly, I devote my April column to college students' financial literacy and behavior. Read More

How Successfully Do Colleges Impart Critical-Thinking Skills?

Expected learning outcomes. Critical thinking. Assessment. Value-added. Read More

State of College Students' Romantic and Physical Unions

With February being the month of Valentine's Day, I thought I'd briefly review some of the latest trends in romance and physical intimacy on American college campuses. Read More

They've Got the Spirit, Yes They Do

Nothing conveys the excitement of January 1 better than college football bowl games, so it seems fitting today to examine college students' relationship to their schools' football teams and the state of college athletics, in general. Read More

College Students’ Political (Non)involvement in the 2010 Midterms

Midterms are not something college students typically get very excited about. No, I'm not talking about course examinations, but rather the national elections held in between presidential election years for the U.S. House and Senate, state governorships, and other offices. Read More

Why So Much Student Texting and Networking?

An mtvU-Associated Press survey, whose results were released in early October, shows the apparent extensiveness of college students' interconnectedness via social media and technology. As one example, 13% of students estimated that they send 101-200 text messages on their cell phone "on a typical day," with another 10% guessing that they send 201 or more texts per day. Read More

Does Attending College Increase Young People’s Drinking?

For my first column, I thought I would ask - and attempt to answer - a slightly controversial question: Does attending college increase young people's alcohol consumption, compared to if they never set foot on a university campus? Such a question can be justified on at least a couple of different grounds. Read More