The federal Education Department is expected to complete at year-end its own study of students' debt burden.
Professor Leahy pointed to one study of students who predicted negative outcomes for various concerns, like an exam or a relationship.
In one study of students who suffered alcohol-related injuries, 21percentt reported consuming eight or more drinks in a row.
Their subjects were participants in a long-term heart study of students from the University of North Carolina who had entered that institution in the 1960s.
The two-year study of students in three cities, by researchers at Harvard University, Georgetown University and the University of Wisconsin, found that the average performance of the black students who switched to private school was 6 percentile points higher than that of students who stayed in public schools.
A study of students at Duke University found that white students, the least likely to have had close friends of a different race, were the most likely to develop more diverse friendships as freshmen -- while black students, who came in with more interracial friendships, had a decline in cross-race friendship freshman year.
A study of students revealed that their brains were refreshed by napping only if they entered what is called stage 2 non-REM sleep, which takes place between deep sleep and the dream state, known as REM or rapid eye movement sleep.
In a replication of the study of students' impressions of evidence about the death penalty, researchers found that even when subjects were given a specific instruction to be objective, they were still inclined to reject evidence that disagreed with their beliefs.
The movement away from middle-of-the-road theology and worship mirrors a trend on college campuses, where growing numbers of students claim either no religion or strong religious affiliation, with the middle ground shrinking, said Alexander Astin, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at U.C.L.A., which last year completed a national study of students' beliefs.
In a 1986 study of students who had scored in the top of their age group on either the math or the verbal sections of the S.A.T., the prevalence of left-handers among the high achievers — over fifteen per cent, as compared to the roughly ten percent found in the general population — was higher than in any comparison groups, which included their siblings and parents.
HAVING IT ALL IMMODEST PROPOSAL A study of students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, published in The Journal of Adolescent Research, found that not one person — male or female — envisioned a proposal in which the woman asked the man.
