Record Low Number Of College Freshmen Partying: UCLA CIRP Survey

New research from the University of California-Los Angeles says fewer college students than ever are spending their nights partying -- or at least admit to it.

UCLA's annual Cooperative Institutional Research Program found the proportion of college freshmen who reported drinking beer fell 50 percentage points from its peak of 73.7 percent in 1982 to 33.4 percent in 2012, an all-time low, according to a release. The total percent of beer-drinking freshmen fell from 35.4 percent in 2011.

That doesn't account for those Jagerbombers out there, but we're getting to that.

The survey also asked respondents how much time they spent in a typical week partying during their senior year in high school. Thirty-seven percent said they didn't party at all, and 33 percent said they spent between one and five hours a week partying. Just 13.7 percent said they spent six or more hours a week partying -- a big drop from a reported 63 percent in 1987 when the question was first asked.

(Another 16 percent said in the 2012 survey they spent less than one hour a week partying, though we're not sure how that's possible to do.)

The findings contradict higher education observers who argue students spend too much time partying instead of studying.

American college freshmen in the survey also gave themselves "above average" ratings on several attributes but bragged most regarding their "drive to achieve." Almost four-fifths of survey responders say they're above average in this category.

The CIRP survey is based on collected responses from 192,912 first-time, full-time college freshmen. Some 54 percent are female compared to 46 percent male. The CIRP began in 1966 and is the longest-running survey of American college students.