Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends: How Campuses Shape College Students' Networks

Draws attention to the importance of support networks for students as they make, keep, and lose friends throughout college and beyond. We’re all familiar with the sentiment that “college is the best time of your life.” Along with a newfound sense of freedom, students have a unique opportunity to forge lifelong friendships at a point in life when friendship is particularly important.Why is it, then, that so many college students are falling victim to what the US Surgeon General termed an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation”?How do different aspects of college life help or hinder students’ ability to form deep connections?In Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends: How Campuses Shape College Students’ Networks, sociologist Janice M.McCabe shows that the way a college is structured-whether students live in dorms or commute, study abroad or stay close to campus, have plentiful common areas for clubs to meet or not-can either encourage or hinder the making of meaningful friendships.Based on i