Arthur Brooks: How to Be Happy at College

Right now, all across America, 2.7 million adolescents are abandoning their families to be raised instead by other adolescents. We call this Lord of the Flies–like rite of passage “going off to college,” and parents believe it is one of the most exciting and happiest moments of their children’s lives. My wife and I certainly hoped so when, some years ago, we delivered our eldest child to a leafy quad in central New Jersey. “You’ll have the time of your life,” I assured him.

In truth, I wasn’t so sure. Despite being an academic of long standing, I don’t have much firsthand knowledge of the freshman experience, having only ever taught graduate students over the past 30 years. And neither my wife nor I had anything like a traditional college experience. (I did my bachelor’s by distance learning in my late 20s, after taking a “gap decade”; my wife dropped out of high school at 16 to sing with a rock band.)

Still, all of our friends had regaled us with glowing accounts of their freshman experiences: the newfound freedom, the friendships that had lasted for decades, and the new adult identity they gained. Testimonials aside, some data bear out these positive memories. According to a survey of college grads by the National Association of Colleges and Employers in 2023, when asked if they would go to college again, 91 percent say they would. And the older they get, the more graduates feel warm and fuzzy nostalgia for their college experience. At my own university, alumni weekends are joyful affairs at which people remember going off to school with unalloyed fondness.

And yet, as a social scientist, I was—and am—confronted by other data showing that the actual experience for many, perhaps most, of today’s college enrollees is not consistent with those happy memories. A Healthy Minds Network study recently revealed that more than one-third of U.S. college students (37 percent) currently screen positive for moderate or severe depressive symptoms. Among Canadian first-year students, 27 percent have moderate to severe depressive symptoms when they enter university, rising to 33 percent by the following March. For anxiety, the equivalent rates were 32 percent and 37 percent. Not surprisingly, many freshmen in the U.S. end up dropping out almost immediately: About 23 percent now do so in their first year.