Top 10 Party School List Comes Out Today

University administrators across the country are holding their breath today as the Princeton Review announces their Top 10 Party Schools. Now schools across the country are taking steps to avoid the list such as changing campus policies and regulating beer sales off campus. Here's an article from USA Today on some universities' efforts:

Concerned colleges try to stanch flow of cheap beer

By Matt Reed, USA TODAY

Several universities regularly listed among the nation's top "party schools" are joining city officials and bar owners to try to curb the supply of the biggest contributor to binge drinking on and off campus: abundant, cheap beer.

The University of Florida is working with Gainesville bar owners, beer distributors and City Hall to discourage drink-till-you-drop specials and to start police "party patrols" to clamp down on rowdy keggers and kids violating the national legal drinking age of 21.

The University of Wisconsin published a guide for students on how to throw a safe house party without serving half the student body. Parents of incoming freshmen got a letter from Chancellor John Wiley warning that "high-risk drinking is one of the prime reasons that some students don't succeed."

"We're not prohibitionists," UW-Madison spokesman John Lucas says. "If we could get everyone to tone it down just a couple of drinks per night, it would make a big difference."

Such efforts take on added importance this week on U.S. campuses as students arrive for fall classes in many states, including Florida, California and New York. The Princeton Review today releases its annual "Top 10 Party Schools" list, based on thousands of student surveys, as part of its Best 361 Colleges guide.

Two factors drive drinking on campus, according to studies from 1993 to 2004 by Harvard's School of Public Health:

•Price. The lower the cost of pitchers, kegs and cases of beer, the higher the rates of heavy drinking among students. Aggressive advertising in campus newspapers feeds the problem, data show.

•Prevalence. The higher the number of bars and liquor stores around campus, the higher the percentage of binge drinkers, who have four or five drinks at a sitting.

Last year, five students in four states died of alcohol poisoning, and about 1,400 die each year in alcohol-related incidents such as fights, car accidents and falls from balconies.

Researchers last fall concluded that college towns that discourage drink discounts, toughen ID checks and banish beer from campus buildings endure slightly fewer problems.

"When it's cheaper to get drunk on a weekend than to go to a movie, then that does something to choices," says lead researcher Henry Weschler of Harvard.

Contributing: Reed reports daily for Florida Today in Melbourne