Perhaps this is partly due to anxiety about taking on so much debt with poor job prospects.

Jake New of Inside Higher Ed reports.

Fragile Mental Health

The emotional health of incoming freshmen is at its lowest point in at least three decades, a new survey shows, with students reporting that they’re spending more time studying and less time socializing with friends.

The American Freshman Survey, an annual report that is now entering its 50th year, collected responses from about 153,000 full-time, first-year students at 227 four-year public and private institutions in 2014. When asked to rate their emotional health in relation to other people their age, only 50.7 percent of the students reported that their emotional health was “in the highest 10 percent” of people or “above average.” It’s the lowest rate since the survey began measuring self-ratings of emotional health in 1985.

“Students who come to college feeling depressed and not emotionally well tend not to graduate,” said Kevin Eagan, director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California at Los Angeles, which publishes the report annually. “They’re much more likely to leave an institution, and that should be worrying.”

The mental and emotional health of students has been of increasing concern to colleges in recent years. In September, the Jed Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to prevent suicide among college students, partnered with the Clinton Foundation Health Matters Initiative to create the Campus Program. Dozens of colleges are currently participating in the program, which is designed to help colleges and universities promote “emotional and mental well-being.”