Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends

"There's no question that college is a unique time to forge lifelong bonds with friends. At no other time in life is one surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of age peers pursuing similar goals in an environment structured to build relationships. College students sit beside potential friends in class, walk to and from activities in groups, live in residential colleges, and cross paths in dining halls, student organizations, and libraries. But are these frequent moments of contact the same as meaningful connections? Which features of friendships keep us feeling lonely and which help us feel supported? How do different aspects of college life help or hinder students' ability to form meaningful connections? This new book from Janice M. McCabe traces how students make, keep, and lose friends on three different types of college campuses-a small elite private college (Dartmouth College), a large public university (University of New Hampshire), and a non-residential community college (Manchester Community College)-focusing especially on how institutional structures affect friendships. Colleges themselves play a big part in whether or not students ultimately form meaningful friendships. Across Dartmouth, UNH, and MCC, friendship networks are patterned in ways that are shaped by institutional features of the colleges that students attend as well as by students' identities. McCabe notes that at all three types of institutions, students experience an initial and then a secondary friendship market. While friendships from the initial market-think orientation or the freshman dorm-do not always last, those made in the secondary market-such as in affinity groups and activities students join later on-are usually formed through shared interests or identity. That said, regularity of contact depends on a school's support, such as funding for groups or reliable access to campus spaces. Across these institutions, contact with peers is in no short supply. But meaningful friendships require periods of prolonged connection with a peer with similar interests. The loneliness epidemic on college campuses is less the problems individual students have making friends and more about the structure of their networks, the structure of the institutions they attend, and how their identities matter in each of these places"--

Janice M. McCabe is associate professor of sociology at Dartmouth College and the Allen House Professor. She is the current president of the Sociology of Education Association and the author of Connecting in College: How Networks Matter for Academic and Social Success, also published by the University of Chicago Press.