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Problem Gambling Increasing Among College Males

Recent research shows that gambling is becoming a college pastime for young men—a trend fueled by high-stakes televised poker matches, more casinos nationwide, and wagering opportunities on the Internet.

Dave Newbart of the Chicago Sun-Times writes that surveys by Don Romer, who has researched high school and college gambling rates for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, show that one in four college men gamble on sports on a monthly basis, while more than one in two take part in any form of gambling—including playing cards and going to casinos.

"Gambling among college students has proliferated over the last 20 years," Romer said.

Problem gambling has become such a concern that the national Task Force on College Gambling Policies issued a report saying that universities should campaign against it in the same way they fight drug and alcohol use. Only 22 percent of colleges have written gambling policies, the task force said, and very few have outreach programs.

The prevalence but lack of discussion about the issue has led some experts to call gambling a "silent addiction" that hits college students disproportionately.

Nationally, Romer's surveys found that most gambling among college students peaked in 2005 and has since leveled off. But problem gambling went from 6.1 percent of students in 2007 to 7.8 percent last year.

At three schools in the Midwest, one researcher found, college students and athletes are three times more likely than adults in the general population to become problem gamblers.

"College students—particularly college athletes—are among the most vulnerable groups to develop gambling problems or pathology," said Cindy Kerber, an assistant nursing professor at Illinois State University.

Nearly 15 percent of 636 college athletes Kerber surveyed—including one in five males but only one in 20 females—are problem or pathological gamblers.

About a third of the athletes had never gambled more than $100 in one day, but 16 had bet more than $1,000 in one day.

The debts can get even higher, thanks to the ease of the Internet and proliferation of credit cards among college students, said Scott Damiani, executive director of the Outreach Foundation for Problem and Compulsive Gamblers in Downers Grove.

He recently counseled a local parent whose son—a sophomore at an Illinois public university—racked up $30,000 in gambling debts on a credit card.
Damiani agrees that colleges should do more outreach on the problem. A former addict himself, he has lectured on the potential downside of betting at the College of DuPage, Aurora University, and Northern Illinois University, among other schools.

But while many schools require athletes to attend sessions on gambling, even the state's biggest schools don't run prevention programs for the general student body. Schools said they would like to ramp up their efforts but don't have the resources.

"Colleges would like to address [gambling] more," said Eric Davidson, associate director of the Eastern Illinois University Health Service. "However, with the current economic concerns that many institutions are experiencing...addressing it in a fashion that would meet the approval of many is a challenge."