How Are 2-Year US Colleges Addressing Student Alcohol Use and Related Problems?

A considerable amount of attention and research has been dedicated to addressing alcohol use and related problems among students at 4-year colleges; however, less attention has been given to alcohol-related issues among students at 2-year technical/community colleges. Total enrollment at US public 2-year colleges is approximately 10 million nationwide, which is about equal to undergraduate enrollment at public 4-year institutions (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013) In addition, many 2-year college students are young adults (American Association of Community Colleges, 2013), an age where alcohol use rates tend to be high (Maggs & Schulenberg, 2004), increasing the risk of alcohol-related problems such as poor academic performance (Singleton, 2007), relationship and legal issues (Sheffield, Darkes, Del Boca, & Goldman, 2005), and injuries and violence (Chen & Paschall, 2003).

Two recent studies of college students across Minnesota (VanKim, Laska, Ehlinger, Lust, & Story, 2010; Velazquez et al., 2011) found that about two thirds of 2-year college students drank alcohol in the past month and at least one third reported binge drinking. Although these rates were somewhat lower than those among students at 4-year colleges, the differences were generally not statistically significant in adjusted analyses. A few earlier studies assessed prevalence of alcohol use among students at a single community college, finding somewhat lower rates of alcohol use than the more recent studies (Chen & Paschall, 2003; Sheffield et al., 2005).

We identified only one peer-reviewed scientific study that examined what 2-year colleges are doing to address alcohol-related issues among their students. Chiauzzi and colleagues (2011) surveyed leaders at 100 community colleges in the United States (one respondent per college) regarding alcohol and other drug (AOD) prevention and programming efforts on their campuses. Respondents reported a high level of concern for underage drinking and binge drinking among students. About half of the respondents reported that their college had a staff person who devoted part of his or her time to AOD issues, and nearly all reported health awareness campaigns and counseling services that addressed AOD issues. Few respondents (< 10%) reported implementation of alcohol screening and intervention services on their campus. Barriers to offering student health programs were funding (82%) and staffing (73%), as well as lack of time that students spend on campus.

To further investigate the range of alcohol services, programs, and policies in place at 2-year colleges in the United States, we conducted an online survey of campus administrators of 106 US 2-year colleges. We expand on the study by Chiauzzi and colleagues (2011) by including more in-depth information on alcohol education, screening, and intervention services as well as data on alcohol enforcement and policy practices at 2-year colleges.

METHOD

We obtained a list of 1,413 accredited 2-year colleges from the American Council on Education (ACE) in 2008. As a secondary source, we used the College Board’s 2008 College Handbook. We excluded colleges that were on the ACE list but not in the College Handbook, virtual and online colleges, and colleges where the majority of degrees awarded were 4-year degrees, resulting in 1,286 colleges. From this list, we randomly selected 201 colleges. We included a random sample of colleges from throughout the country with the goal that our results may be generalizable to 2-year colleges as a whole rather than colleges in a specific region or of certain sizes and types.

We attempted to survey one participant per college. We initially identified the highest-ranking administrator at each college (usually the president) via website review and phone calls to the colleges. We targeted the highest ranking official as a first point of contact to be consistent across colleges as not all the colleges necessarily have similar administrative structures. We contacted each potential participant with an email invitation that included a link to complete the survey online. This was followed by five reminder emails and up to 10 phone calls. We achieved a response rate of 52.7% (106/201), including...