A Summary of Michael Moffatt’s

"College Life: Undergraduate Culture and Higher Education"

In “College Life: Undergraduate Culture and Higher Education,” anthropologist Michael Moffatt describes how he spent two years in a Rutgers University dormitory in order to study how contemporary American students live.  His studies showed that students thought personal growth and socializing were just as important as formal education.  American college life has traditionally stressed extracurricular fun, and according to Moffatt, this has not changed even though graduates in the 1980s face a job market where educational credentials are increasingly important.  The liberalization of dorm rules in the 1960s left college students in control of their private lives and subject to relatively few restrictions.  Indeed, the focal points of students’ nonacademic life are friendship and sex, both of which are often linked with partying.  Moffatt concludes that college professors and administrators do not challenge students’ priorities because many of them will lose their university jobs if students are no longer attracted to campuses by the pleasures of college life (44-61).

Original Article: Journal of Higher Education Jan./Feb. 1991: 44-61.

Reprint Article: Reading and Writing in the Academic Community (1994): 35-43.