April 16, 2011

According to a 2010 U.S. national survey of over 200,000 incoming college freshmen at four-year colleges, fewer students than ever before are reporting above-average emotional health (52%), the lowest since the question first appeared in 1985. Incoming college students’ feelings of being overwhelmed before entering college also reached an all-time high at 29%, but even higher (39%) for women. As emotional health drops, students’ drive to succeed is trending upward with 76% rating their drive to succeed in the “highest ten percent”.

The survey is part of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP), and is administered nationally by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

Lower levels of emotional health combined with higher levels of feeling overwhelmed and an increased drive to succeed point toward increased college stress and underscore the growing importance of stress management for college students.

“Often considered positive traits, high levels of drive to achieve and academic ability could also contribute to students' feelings of stress”, said John H. Pryor, lead author of the report and director of CIRP.

"Stress is a major concern when dealing with college students," he said. "If students are arriving in college already overwhelmed and with lower reserves of emotional health, faculty, deans and administrators should expect to see more consequences of stress, such as higher levels of poor judgment around time management, alcohol consumption and academic motivation."

Yet amid fear and possible stress, optimism prevails with 57.6% believing that there is a “very good chance” that they will be satisfied with college, the highest rating in 28 years.

Source: Pryor, J.H., Hurtado, S., DeAngelo, L., Palucki Blake, L., & Tran, S. (2010). The American freshman: National norms fall 2010. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA.

Dave Gorczynski is president of SPARK, a non-profit organization that has provided free energy work sessions and workshops across New York City since 2002. He writes a regular column about energy work and meditation for the Compact News in New York City's Chinatown. E-mail him at dave@sparkenergy.org.