Best party schools versus best educational schools

William Atkins
Saturday, 18 April 2009 22:43

Opinion and Analysis

The Princeton Review also has a party school ranking in its college guides.

Wikipedia makes the statement: “In 2003, the American Medical Association requested that the Princeton Review remove the party school rankings from its college guides. Dr. Richard Yost, director of the AMA's Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse, said, "The Princeton Review should be ashamed to publish something for students and parents that fuels the false notion that alcohol is central to the college experience and that ignores the dangerous consequences of high-risk drinking. College binge drinking is a major public health issue and a source of numerous problems for institutions of higher learning. The accuracy of The Princeton Review's rankings has also been questioned, especially with regards to the larger schools. Experts argue that the sample size of students surveyed at each college (three hundred students, on average) is not enough to provide a truthful depiction of student behavior. "It's positively unscientific," said Dr. Henry Weschler of the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Studies Program.”

Well, if these results are unscientific, then make it scientific and perform a study on a larger percentage of students to make the results sound. We have plenty of psychologists and social researchers out there. Do the research and publish the results to make it scientific!

Wikiepedia goes on to say, “Administrators, professors, and many students at so-called "party schools" have tried to disassociate themselves from the rankings. For example, West Virginia University president Michael Garrison refused to give interviews about his school's appearance in the 2007–08 Princeton Review list. "I've talked to thousands of our students over the weekend and during the first days of classes. Their concerns are with their education, with their futures, and with the great year we have ahead at WVU," he said in a prepared statement.”

Yes, in all cases, the majority of students are serious about their education. But, it’s the minority of students that cause the problems. It’s also a minority of adults that cause the problems in society in general.

If all we say is that the majority of students are serious students and don’t do anything with the minority of students that are binge drinking and abusing drugs, then we still have a problem, don’t we.

Are we only going to do something about a problem when the majority of people have it? Do we wait until 50.1% of the students are binge drinkers? Do we stand by and do nothing until 50.2% of the students are zapped out from illegal drugs.

Do we do nothing until our country can’t produce enough engineers, scientists, teachers, and other college-educated people to support our society and we have to import them from other countries. Already companies complain about being unable to get qualified personnel to fill critical jobs in the United States. When do we get serious?

Let’s start doing something about our problems now rather than wait until our problems start to overwhelm us to the point we can’t handle them.

When do we start making “smart” the in thing to do, and when do we start making “irresponsibility” the dumb thing to do.

When do we start?