Fall Semester: A Time for Parents to Discuss the Risks of College Drinking

As college students arrive on campus this fall, it's a time of new experiences, new friendships, and making memories that will last a lifetime. Unfortunately for many, it is also a time of excessive drinking and dealing with its aftermath—vandalism, violence, sexual aggression, and even death.

According to the 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 59.8 percent of full-time college students ages 18 to 22 drank alcohol in the past month; 37.9 percent engaged in binge drinking (five or more drinks on an occasion); and 12.2 percent engaged in heavy drinking (five or more drinks on an occasion on five or more occasions per month). These rates are higher than those for their non-college attending peers.

The consequences of excessive drinking by college students are more significant, more destructive, and more costly than many parents realize. And these consequences affect students whether or not they drink.

Statistics from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) indicate that drinking by college students ages 18 to 24 contributes to an estimated 1,825 student deaths, 696,000 assaults by another student who has been drinking, and 97,000 cases of sexual assault or date rape each year.

Early Weeks Are Critical

Although the majority of students come to college already having some experience with alcohol, certain aspects of college life, such as unstructured time, the widespread availability of alcohol, inconsistent enforcement of underage drinking laws, and limited interactions with parents and other adults, can intensify the problem.

The first six weeks of freshman year are a vulnerable time for heavy drinking and alcohol-related consequences because of student expectations and social pressures at the start of the academic year.

Parents Can Help

An often-overlooked protective factor involves the continuing influence of parents. Research shows that students who abstain from drinking often do so because their parents discussed alcohol use and its adverse consequences with them. During these crucial early weeks, parents can do a number of things to stay involved.

Parents can help by:

• Talking with students about the dangers of harmful and underage college drinking—such as the penalties for underage drinking, and how alcohol use can lead to date rape, violence, and academic failure.
• Reaching out periodically and keeping the lines of communication open, while staying alert for possible alcohol-related problems. 
• Reminding students to feel free to reach out to them to share information about their daily activities, and to ask for help if needed.
• Learning about the school's alcohol prevention and emergency intervention efforts.
• Making sure students know signs of alcohol overdose or an alcohol-related problem, and how to help. 

Resources Are Available

For parents who want to discuss the consequences of college drinking with their sons and daughters, a variety of helpful resources are available from NIAAA at www.CollegeDrinkingPrevention.gov.

These resources include a parents' guide that offers research-based information plus helpful advice on staying involved during the freshman year, and getting assistance if faced with an alcohol-related crisis.

The website also provides links to alcohol policies at colleges across the country, an interactive diagram of how alcohol affects the human body, and an interactive alcohol cost calculator.

It's Labor Day weekend...

Cat says 300 at Mossville received layoff notices

Caterpillar Inc. said Friday that 300 of its employees in Mossville were notified this week of their impending layoff.

The company said it was employees in the engineering and support staffs that were given WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) Act letters informing them that their jobs were being eliminated by Oct. 31, 2016. The 300 included managers, as well, the company said, and work in Building AC and the Tech Center at Mossville.

The letters started going out on Monday of this week, but the company declined earlier to say how many were affected. On Friday it did not disclose the number of employees at its Mossville facilities but said there were about 13,100 in the Peoria area at the end of the second quarter.

These layoffs are part of the overall global restructuring Caterpillar announced nearly one year ago, when it said it would close and/or consolidate facilities and operations and cut its workforce by about 10,000 worldwide.

Since then the company has made restructuring announcements on a periodic basis. Two weeks ago, on the same day it announced the consolidation of its Mossville units that led to the 300 WARN letters, the company announced restricting and consolidations within its mining divisions that would result in the closure of plants, including in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and the elimination of hundreds of jobs.

The restructuring went overseas on Friday, when the company announced it is considering closing a product facility in Belgium and moving that work to a plant in Grenoble, France and other non-European facilities. If that occurs it would result in the elimination of up to 2,000 jobs, the company said.

The Belgium factory manufactures construction equipment.

On Thursday, the company informed employees of a factory in Northern Ireland that it would close one plant and reduce the workforce there by 200 to 250 over the next two years. The Monkstown facility that will close manufactures electric power generator sets.

Regarding the 300 who received WARN letters here, Caterpillar said some of those workers will be relocated to other positions within Caterpillar before the layoffs take effect. The company has said it will work with those who are laid off to find other work and those will receive severance packages.

Competitive neighboring states poach Illinois college students

By Vimbai Chikomo
for ILLINOIS NEWS NETWORK
 
Hoping to benefit from Illinois’ economic hardships, public universities in states bordering Illinois have aggressively sought to recruit Illinois students in recent years.
 
The result: An increasing flow of young Illinoisans crossing state lines in pursuit of affordable higher education. If the trend continues, this fall won’t be any different.
 
What tends to draw prospective Illinoisan collegians to other states are out-of-state tuition rates at some public schools below what Illinois students would pay in-state at many of their home state’s institutions.
 
National data shows that in 2004, approximately 15 percent of Illinois high school graduates attended college outside of their home state. By 2014 that had risen to 22 percent — 10,000 more students than a decade earlier — making Illinois’ migration percentage the highest among Midwestern states, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
 
Last fall, the University of Wisconsin-Madison attracted 2,636 undergraduate students from Illinois.
 
The University of Wisconsin’s Whitewater campus, which is only 25 miles from the Illinois border, is charging out-of-state students $16,222 for tuition for the 2016-17 school year.  
 
By comparison, in-state students attending the University of Illinois will pay between $15,630 and $20,634 in tuition for the upcoming school year, depending on when they enrolled. In-state students at Illinois State in Bloomington-Normal will pay $14,062 for tuition for the 2016-17 school year.  
 
The national average for tuition fees at public four-year colleges is $9,410 for in-state students and $23,893 for non-residents, the College Board’s Annual Survey of Colleges 2015-16 reported.
 
“We have certainly seen an increase in the number of Illinois students attending UW-Whitewater,” Jeremy Smith, non-resident admissions coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, said. “Currently, we have over 1,500 Illinois students attending UW-Whitewater, and this year, we plan to enroll about 360 new freshmen from Illinois for the Fall 2016 semester.”
 
Smith said he believes there are a number of driving factors as to why more Illinois students are attending UW-Whitewater.
 
“Our non-resident tuition costs are very competitive and oftentimes favorable in comparison to in-state tuition rates in Illinois,” Smith said.
 
UW-Whitewater has hired an additional staff member devoted to non-resident recruitment from Illinois.
 
“The budget crisis in Illinois has lasted more than a year, and funding cuts have caused some Illinois colleges to make significant changes,” Smith said. “The growing concern regarding the state budget may be causing more students to explore their options outside of the state.”
 
State Rep. Mark Batinick, R-Plainfield, said the out-migration of Illinois students is a bigger problem than many realize.
 
“This is what’s (threatening) the state’s future," Batinick said. "This is one of the biggest ticking time bombs that we have. (It’s) bigger than the pension crisis."
 
The loss of young Illinoisans to other states is one of the issues Batinick has taken on since joining the General Assembly in 2015.
 
“They are poaching our smart kids because if you have a certain ACT score or GPA, they’ll give you in-state tuition at a lot of schools,” Batinick said.
 
Several years ago, UW-Whitewater established a Non-Resident New Freshmen Scholarship program for non-resident students who have a minimum of a 3.25 un-weighted GPA on a four-point scale, and a composite score of 23 on the ACT. The scholarships range from $2,000 to $4,000, depending on the students’ academic merit.
 
The core issue here at home is why tuition rates at Illinois public universities are so high. Batinick once thought the reason was limited state funding, but his view has changed.
 
“In 2014, we were actually spending nearly double the national average per student on higher education in Illinois,” Batinick said. “So it’s not a funding issue from the state.”
 
The reason why it is expensive to do business in Illinois is the same reason it is expensive to run government in Illinois, Batinick said.
 
“For example, the University of Illinois’ liability insurance has gone up 1,000 percent since 1996,” Batinick said. “When workman's compensation rates are high, guess what, universities pay workman's compensation.”
 
Wisconsin isn’t the only state attracting Illinois students. The University of Iowa, located in Iowa City, also has seen an increasing number of students from Illinois in recent years.
 
“We’ve had very strong interest from students living in Illinois for years,” Anne Bassett, media relations director from the Office of Strategic Communication at the University of Iowa, said. “The University of Iowa is a great choice for many reasons, including being a Big Ten institution where students can receive a high-quality education at a great value that’s only a few hours from home.”
 
Although the university is still finalizing its Fall 2016 numbers, last year, 30 percent of first-year students were from Illinois, Bassett said.
 
According to the school’s website, the University of Iowa welcomed 5,241 new first-year students in fall 2015, or roughly nearly 1,600 from Illinois.
 
Out-of-state tuition at Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo., is $14,110, for 2016-17, according to the university. Missouri State also allows students from Illinois to apply for an out-of-state fee waiver, which affords Illinois students the opportunity to enjoy the same rates that Missouri students pay. That cuts tuition by nearly half – to $7,060 per academic year.
 
“We need to make everything that we do as a state more efficient, but it’s really easy to see the effect of it in higher education,” Batinick said.