Fraternities seemed to be the only place on the campus with a ready supply of friends for freshmen. I made no friends there until my last year in college, and then only by chance. Even today, most college students make few friends through their classes until late in their college careers, if at all. That's one reason college students become binge drinkers. Such a claim may sound like some kind of bad joke, so I hasten to explain.
Students also make that distinction.
With the rest of their friends, they'll say, such topics seldom come up. It's peculiar, when you think about it, that most American colleges do not help entering students make friends through their course work. Presumably, one goal of liberal education is to enrich life with the kind of conversation that comes with substantive friendship. And when colleges actively provide students with the opportunity to make friends through their classes, they eagerly grasp the chance. The retention rate of the students studied was 73 percent, compared with the college's normal average of 59 per cent.