Institutions respond to campus drinking
Recent alcohol-related deaths involving college students have drawn varied responses from institutions attempting to deal with the problem of excessive drinking by students. For example, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is forming an "alternative location task force" to encourage Greek organizations to party off campus and away from underage students.

Salisbury State University in Maryland sets up a bar in a campus dining hall in order to control the amount of alcohol students drink and to discourage them from driving under the influence.

Whatever methods campuses try, the keys to controlling alcohol use are consistent enforcement of campus alcohol policies and providing students with meaningful alternative activities to drinking, reports U.S. News & World Report.

However, many institutions are far from solving their campus drinking problems, in part because administrators are less than fully informed about such problems. In a survey of presidents of four-year institutions, U.S. News found that only 3 percent estimated the rate of binge drinking on their campus to be as high as a Harvard University study found it to be. In addition, 21 percent of the presidents surveyed were totally unaware of the rate of binge drinking on their campus.

(Sources: The News & Observer (Charlotte, N.C.), 1/20/98; U.S. News & World Report, 1/26/98, The Wall Street Journal, 1/29/98.

College remedial courses
In 1995, freshmen in public 2-year institutions were far more likely to enroll in remedial courses (41 percent) than freshmen in public four-year institutions (22 percent). Almost all public two-year institutions offered remedial writing and mathematics courses, while about 75 percent of public four-year institutions offered remedial courses in these subjects. Half of all private four-year institutions offered remedial courses in writing and mathematics.

(Source: National Center for Education Statistics, 1/98.

Reprinted from CASE Flash Point.