Forbes has an article about the prevalence of a party atmosphere at many campuses of higher education. Naturally it takes a dim view thereof.
Let's start with two facts I know from personal experience: there is nothing new about the party school trope, and being known as a party school doesn't necessarily hurt the ability of a campus to attract recruiters to hire their students.
My baccalaureate alma mater - San Jose State University - was a party school when I attended it in the early 1960s. Very likely it is that no longer.
While there my buddies and I witnessed street bonfires, mini-riots (noisy and mostly nonviolent), bed races, drunken bacchanals, joyriding on a D-8 bulldozer and generalized silliness. We survived mean hangovers, did some studying too, and wrote our own papers.
My major employer during a 35 year college faculty career - California State University, Chico - was declared the nation's number one party school in the January, 1987, issue of Playboy magazine (p. 173). In spite of which (or because of which) we drew a respectable cadre of recruiters to hire our graduates. Recruiters told us they appreciated our students' well-honed social skills.
Chico State isn't the party school it once was, the annual Pioneer Week spring festival/fertility rites are no more. Even so, every year a couple of Chico students manage to drink themselves to death.
Resisting riotous partying is a task college administrations need to view as a continuing responsibility, part of their job description. Students step on the gas, administrators apply the brakes, understanding their role is to calm down, but not stop, the party.
