College Shorts

Mental illness increases on college campuses

According to a recent study presented at the 118th convention of the American Psychological Association, mental illness has seen a marked increase among college students over the last decade.

“University and college counseling services around the country are reporting that the needs of students seeking services are escalating toward more severe psychological problems,” said John Guthman, PhD, the study’s author.

The study is based on the records of 3,256 college students who made use of college counseling services at a mid-sized university between September 1997 and August 2009.

“The percentage of students with moderate to severe depression has gone up from 34 to 41 percent” over that time period, said Guthman.  Furthermore, as the study noted, the number of students taking psychiatric medicines increased by more than 10 percent during the same period.

The report speculated that perhaps the increase in anxiety and more severe cases of depression among college students is due to the students entering college with pre-existing mental disorders.

— Science Codex

Williams ranks number one on Forbes college list
Williams College was ranked at the top of a Forbes magazine’s annual list of “America’s Best Colleges.”  The list ranked the top 610 schools out of the more than 6000 accredited post-secondary institutions in the country.

Forbes ranked the schools based on “the quality of education they provide, the experiences of the students and how much they achieve.”

The rest of the top 10 included Princeton, Amherst, the United States Military Academy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Swarthmore, Harvard, Claremont McKenna, and Harvard.

Middlebury ranked number 26 on Forbes’s list.

According to Forbes, the index used to create the ranking is largely compiled using research from the Center for College Affordability & Productivity, in Washington, D. C.

— The Huffington Post

U. of Iowa scrambles to accommodate freshmen

The University of Iowa dramatically over-admitted this year, accepting thousands more students than normal for the Class of 2015.  Though many have chosen to matriculate elsewhere, according to most estimates, Iowa will need to somehow accommodate at least 400 more freshmen than normal this year, for a total of more than 4,500.

Iowa has apparently been unusually successful in recruiting students; the Class of 2015 will include many students from out of state and even some from as far away as India and China.

“It’s good-bad,” said Tom Rocklin, interim vice president for student services. “You want them here.  But we have to house these students. We have to ensure they have the classes they need.”

As a result, the university has been scrambling to secure local apartment buildings and to convert common dormitory spaces into private residential rooms.

The boom in students seems to be the result of an aggressive marketing strategy on the part of Iowa’s office of admissions.

— The New York Times