Gaming and College dropouts

Games Politics, a blog I read on a semi-regular basis points out an interesting concern by the FCC Commissioner on the relationship between college drop outs and World of Warcraft. Deborah Taylor Tate briefly referenced the following with no other support on December 5th.

You might find it alarming that one of the top reasons for college drop-outs in the U.S. is online gaming addiction - such as World of Warcraft - which is played by 11 million individuals worldwide.

Obviously World of Warcraft is referenced specifically for it's notority, but it is very clever in it's way of opening up the fears of and concerns of parents at it's mere utterance. Of course this reminds me of the parody of similar concerns of a more primative version of a similar form of escapism.

Although I applaud her serious interest in the importance of broadband internet for the US I will have to punch a few holes in this particular statement for a moment.

First of all, there are a number of more pressiong and real reasons which college students drop out of school. Many of which could be generalized to either be from or cause depession. This could be a confounding variable in which depressed college students are more likely to play World of Warcraft and drop out of college. So unless there has been a particularly clever research into college students and MMORPGs I'm unconvinced by this supposed correlation.

Secondly, I would say from even looking at the trends published by the US Department of Health and Human Services, from 1970 to 1995, the percentage of highschool graduates who have attended college by the age of 25-29 increased from 40% to nearly 60%, yet within this same population, the percent of those who attained a bachelor's degree has stayed around 25%. So from a purely statistical standpoint, there are more college dropouts, because there are more college students to drop out. Any study of trends in college drop outs must take this into consideration in linking any causitive variables.

So what was the purpose of this statement. It seemed to me that the role of the FCC has always been whatever the commissioner at the time deemed it to be. When Micheal Powell (a fellow alumn of mine) was at the helm, he was more concerned with business practices and fair ownership of airwaves. Deborah Taylor Tate has been the "Children's Commissioner", we have to remember that she is the same person who convinced the "Cookie Monster" that cookies were a sometimes food.