As an Illinois university is now diverting student fees to sex reassignment surgeries, it may be time to seriously look at the real health needs of students.

Allie Grasgreen on Inside Higher Ed has this analysis, showing data behind the illnesses that are actually bringing students to campus health clinics.

If American universities are spending millions of dollars a year on health services for students, shouldn’t they at least know what they’re dealing with?

Duh: yes, says James C. Turner, director of student health services at the University of Virginia.

“We have no aggregate data on either the health trends of college students or their utilization of health services,” Turner said here at the annual meeting of the American College Health Association. That’s why, last year, Turner started the College Health Surveillance Network, which compiles data from volunteer institutions to track how many students are visiting campus health centers, how often and why.

This year and last, Turner’s data generated considerable interest at the ACHA conference. The CHSN is a unique project; the only other tool universities have at their disposal is ACHA’s National College Health Assessment, which relies on students’ self-reporting. CHSN data comes straight from institutional records, which do not rely on memory — although they do probably understate diagnoses because of variations in the procedures and attentiveness of staff when it comes to coding (the process by which health center staff record student visits and diagnoses).

One attendee from a CHSN institution said he took issue with the validity of Turner’s data — not because the aggregation is faulty, but because the health center staff don’t always take the time to assess and document deeper issues like anxiety when a student comes in with a primary complaint that only takes two minutes to address.

The article lists the top 10 reasons for student healthcare visits:

1. URI, pharyngitis, other respiratory symptoms
2. Birth control
3. Physicals
4. Sexually transmitted infections screenings
5. Injuries (all categories)
6. General symptoms (e.g. fatigue, sleep disorders, fever)
7. Urinary symptoms including UTI
8. Digestive system symptoms (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea)
9. Joint pain
10. Menstrual and other gynecologic disorders

Clearly, sex change is not on this list.