Reimagining the Campus Experience

The late 19th century brought into existence the modern student experience, consisting of extracurricular clubs and organizations, intercollegiate athletics, Greek life, student government and a host of campus traditions, from homecoming to campus bonfires -- like the 1999 Aggie Bonfire that left 12 Texas A&M students dead and 27 injured.

Student life, in turn, produced campus cultures that downplayed the value of academics and glorified athletic prowess, style, parties, pranks and casual socializing.

It was campus life, not academics, that explains much of college’s appeal. Ironically, the student experience made American campuses the envy of the world by generating levels of alumni loyalty and gifts without equal elsewhere.

The rise of the modern student experience contributed to the emergence of a distinctive campus hierarchy, capped by the big men on campus. Underneath that elite, various student subcultures emerged.

There were the collegiate types, who emphasized fun above academics, and included frat boys and young women in the most prestigious sororities. There were also outsiders, consisting of less affluent students with strong vocational aspirations, bohemians and, especially since the early 1960s, activists.

That earlier student hierarchy declined sharply after World War II even before the growing campus ethnic and racial diversity put it to an end altogether. As student bodies expanded and diversified, interest in a campus life organized around intercollegiate football began to decline. Campus growth also fueled the division of the students into a wide range of cliques, cohorts and other subgroups.

Today’s campuses consist of a multiplicity of groups differing in ethnicity and race, gender, and aspirations, with no readily identifiable status hierarchy.

There are artsies, blow-it-offs, burnouts, chemheads, computer nerds, dorks, dweebs, fossils, freaks, geeks, goths, grinds, jocks, party animals, preppies, stoners, study holics, ROTC cadets -- all dependent on their differing stances toward academic studies; athletics; involvement in campus life or art, music and theater; social life; and sexual orientation, not to mention their personality and demeanor.

All that said, there are certain themes that cut across many of these cohorts. On many residential campuses, binge drinking -- or getting wasted or hammered -- and “serious” partying are remarkably widespread, and have come to define college-going in the popular imagination. According to a 2019 national survey, about 33 percent engaged in binge drinking during the preceding month, with heavy drinking most common among white and male undergraduates.

Although nominally many campuses express alarm at the prevalence of underage drinking, and warn students about its association with academic failure and sexual violence, many colleges are unwilling to crack down on alcohol-soaked parties, which many administrators see as an integral part of the college experience and a way to channel student energies that might otherwise be redirected into protest.

For many students, social drinking, drinking games and heavy partying are associated with camaraderie, bonding, release from inhibitions and the appeal of the illicit and the allure of transgression. And, of course, some students use alcohol as a tool to facilitate, explain and justify sexual encounters.

At the same time, at many institutions, including many commuter campuses, a sharp division has emerged between the insiders who actively take part in collegiate life and the outsiders who don’t. The in-group includes those who take an active role in student government, athletics, Greek life and the more visible campus organizations, while the out-group tends to be those who must juggle their studies with work and family responsibilities.

As Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton have shown, campus life allows more affluent, socially adept and athletically or artistically gifted students to take advantage of student life resources, while relegating the outsiders to a much less engaged, much more marginalized college experience.

Many campuses have accommodated this insider-outsider division by giving fraternities and sororities an outsize influence on campus life, by offering many low-demand, low-outcome majors designed to appeal to full-paying students, and creating a campus atmosphere that leaves many working-class students feeling alienated and adrift.

It’s time, I am convinced, to reimagine campus life to serve all students, not a select group of insiders, and that provides better options than drunken train wrecks.

Here are several guiding principles:

1. Don’t expect students to become more academic.

Anyone who thinks that we can transform undergraduate life into something like the graduate or professional school experience is sadly deluded. A substantial proportion of students go to college to party and socialize. That’s not going to change.

Also, I think it would be a mistake to try to restrict the coming of age, rite of passage aspects of the college experience. That said, we can create alternatives to the party culture.

2. Maximize participation.

We’ve all heard the jokes about elementary schools that award medals for participation. But before we disparage those awards, couldn’t we do better to encourage participation in campus life? Maximizing participation will, of course, force us to downplay our current “star system” approach, which discourages all but the most popular, ambitious, social and athletically talented from taking advantage of student life resources.

3. Encourage a multiplicity of options.

Given the diversity of our student bodies along every dimension, we must create many more opportunities for engagement. On today’s campuses, any sense of a universal student experience will fail to do justice to the range of student interests and talents.

4. Blur the boundaries between the curriculum and the extracurriculum.

Posttraditional students with busy lives currently have extremely limited time to participate in extracurricular activities. There’s an obvious solution: incorporate aspects of the extracurriculum into curriculum or co-curriculum.

5. Do everything in your power to develop audiences.

Many campuses take extraordinary efforts to maximize attendance at sporting events but do little to promote turnout at student art exhibitions, concerts or theatrical performances. Much as we want engagement in academics, we need to cultivate audiences for other student activities.

Here are a few practical suggestions about ways to implement a reimagined student experience:

1. Take student satisfaction surveys and focus groups seriously.

Despite their limitations in terms of representativeness, I have found student satisfaction surveys eye-opening, especially when I compared results with those of peer institutions. Focus groups, in turn, offer a way to uncover differing interests based on subpopulations and an opportunity to brainstorm about possible innovative student life initiatives.

2. Rethink your campus’s student life priorities.

As David Labaree has shown, intercollegiate football played a crucial role in transforming college into a popular aspiration. Even today, Division I football remains a signifier of big-league status for a university. But the fact is that for most undergraduates, football’s appeal has faded.

In stark contrast, attendance at international food fairs or at jazz performances in college buildings is often remarkable.

3. Think outside the box.

Many students who can’t take part in study abroad are absolutely delighted to take trips closer to home. You might use your campus’s hometown as a learning laboratory. Or you might combine a tour and a service learning or oral history project in a nearby city.

Nor must study abroad take a conventional form. Some students find a weeklong or 10-day research trip life-changing.

4. Make faculty student life partners.

Many students crave the opportunity to interact with faculty outside class. To that end, many campuses have instituted “take your professor to lunch” opportunities. But there’s no reason why such programs can’t be scaled. Invite a dozen professors to lunch along with several dozen students, and let the students rotate from one table to another.

5. Evaluate your student life initiatives in terms of inclusion and diversity.

Student life shouldn’t be limited to the usual suspects. Measure success by the numbers of student served. Expand intramural sports. Offer yoga classes at lunchtime. Embed concerts in classroom buildings.

Let’s make “serving all students” the watchword of campus life.

Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.