Drinking has become recognized as one of the most important problems facing today's college student. Even though college drinking has increased only modestly over the past few decades, concern about its health, behavioral, and safety consequences has risen rapidly. This book examines college drinking as a social problem within higher education, based on interviews with many leading figures engaged in addressing the problem. It explains how high-risk drinking is defined, and assesses the evidence about how many students are binge drinkers and what kinds of behavioral and health problems they have as a consequence. The book also answers the crucial questions of why students binge drink and what mixture of personal and environmental factors produce binge drinking. The complex links to campus crime and sexual assault are discussed fully. Key practical questions about effective prevention programs and countermeasures are discussed in detail. Students and parents can take action to lower the risk of binge drinking by following the book's recommendations and by consulting its appendix, which explains how to use institutional data about alcohol violations and crime, which is available for several thousand colleges. Likewise, administrators, trustees, and faculty will find a full discussion of the scope of the problem and what can be done about it.

Drinking is recognised as one of the most important problems confronting students on campus today, with major impacts on health and safety. This book answers crucial questions about why students drink, examines its complex links to campus crime and sexual assault, and offers new insights on how to address the issue. It differs from other studies of college drinking by dispelling the myth that the problem is universal. Dowdall’s research reveals that the incidence of alcohol abuse varies enormously between colleges, and in doing so identifies interventions and policies that have been effective, and those that have failed. His study is also unique in looking “upstream” at the broader cultural, organisational and social forces that shape this behaviour, where most studies focus only on “downstream” behaviours, well after students have selected their college and have started drinking. Students and parents can take action to lower the risk of binge drinking by following the book’s recommendations, and consulting the data it provides about alcohol violations and crime at thousands of colleges. For administrators and student affairs personnel, it both defines and illuminates the issue, and outlines effective interventions.