College vs. Noncollege Status
Many people think that the college campus environment itself encourages heavy drinking (14). Alcohol use is present at most college social functions, and many students view college as a place to drink excessively. Yet several studies have found that heavy drinking and related problems are pervasive among people in their early twenties, regardless of whether they attend college or not (15,16). In fact, a recent survey shows that college students drink less frequently than their noncollege peers (that is, 3.7 percent of students report daily drinking vs. 4.5 percent of nonstudents). However, when students do drink, such as at parties on the weekends, they tend to drink in greater quantities than nonstudents5 (17). (5 In this study, 41.7 percent of college students vs. 37.1 percent of young adults reported drinking five or more drinks during the last 2 weeks [17].)
On the other hand, students tend to stop these drinking practices more quickly than nonstudents—perhaps “maturing out” of harmful alcohol use before it becomes a long-term problem (16). Rates of alcohol dependence diagnosis appear lower for college students than for 18- to 24-year-olds in the general population (15). And people in their thirties who did not go to college reported a higher prevalence of heavy drinking than people who did go to college (18).