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Let’s start by saying that college itself isn’t inherently flawed. The chance to obtain a higher education is a privilege that many young people don’t have, and there are certainly numerous ways college fosters critical thinking and a deeper understanding of the world around us. However, these aren’t among those ways. Here are ten reasons college might actually make you less intelligent.
10. Conformity in Thought
Reason: You’re Less Intelligent When You’re in a Group
By its nature, college operates as a group-based learning environment. Due to limited resources and time, it’s not feasible to offer individualized tutoring for every student. As a result, classes often consist of twenty to thirty students. Professors may break them into smaller groups for assignments, but research reveals that working in small groups actually diminishes your intelligence.
A study conducted at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute first measured participants' IQs, then grouped them into teams of five. After completing another round of tests, their performance scores plummeted. Why? The researchers suggest that social status has a significant influence on how our brains function. When participants focused on their social roles within the group, even unconsciously, it hindered their ability to concentrate fully on the tasks. This could also have real-world implications in business meetings, political environments (e.g., Congress), and academic settings.
9. Sitting for Prolonged Periods
Reason: Sitting for Extended Hours Lowers Mental Agility
According to the following study, you’re likely becoming less intelligent just by reading this article (though, to be fair, it could be due to the poor writing). Dr. James Levine from the Mayo Clinic has been researching the effects of prolonged sitting on individual health, and the results aren’t promising.
Although the primary aim of the study was to explore how inactivity contributes to weight gain, it turns out that sitting for long periods also impacts brain activity. Levine discovered that people who sit for more than two hours a day experience a significant drop in metabolic rate, which is thought to directly influence cognitive performance. Your brain relies on glucose as fuel, which is produced by burning calories. So while sitting through four hours of classes or pulling an all-nighter for exams might bombard you with information, over time, your brain’s capacity to process it efficiently diminishes.
8. Multitasking
Reason: Multitasking Makes It Hard to Retain Information
Who hasn’t attempted to multitask at school or work? A packed class schedule pushes college students to juggle multiple tasks in an effort to save time—but it’s not as beneficial as they might believe. Clifford Nass and his research team ran tests to examine how some individuals multitask successfully while others struggle, and they found that multitaskers are actually worse at nearly everything.
Multitaskers, they discovered, struggled to process new information and remember it shortly afterward. For instance, when shown a sequence of letters, they couldn’t identify when one letter was repeated. In another test, they had difficulty determining if a number was even or odd, or if a letter was a consonant or vowel. The researchers argue that people who frequently multitask harm their ability to filter out irrelevant information, making it harder to focus on one task at a time. So, next time you’re reading Mytour during a sociology lecture, maybe it’s better to just leave the classroom. You’ll probably learn more here.
7. Jogging
Reason: Jogging Around Your College Town Can Make You Less Intelligent
Whether you’re working off stress after a challenging day of classes or trying to shake off that morning hangover, exercise is a great way to get your brain moving. That is, unless you happen to live close to a city.
A recent study reveals that jogging in an urban setting—anywhere near pollution—can impair your ability to absorb new information. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, a Belgian university, tested two groups of runners—those who exercised in the city and those who ran in rural areas—and found that the city dwellers had a shorter attention span and slower response times. This was linked to higher levels of air pollutants in their bloodstream after just one hour of running.
But it’s not all doom and gloom—try running in the rain or on a windy day, as this can temporarily lower pollution levels.
6. Diet
Reason: Your College Diet is Destroying Your Memory
College can be many things, but it's hardly a place that promotes healthy eating habits. The soda, energy drinks, and late-night frozen pizzas—these college essentials might give you a quick pick-me-up, but in the long run, they’re wreaking havoc on your memory.
High fructose corn syrup, a byproduct of corn, is widely used to sweeten food products. A research team at UCLA studied how rats, fed a diet high in HFCS, performed at remembering a maze. After six weeks of drinking fructose-laced water, the rats struggled in nearly every task. According to lead researcher Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, “Their brain cells had difficulty communicating, which disrupted their ability to think clearly and remember the route they had learned six weeks before.”
The good news? The same study found that eating foods rich in Omega-3s can help reverse some of the cognitive damage caused by high fructose corn syrup.
5. Water
Reason: Your Dorm's Water Could Be Worse For You
While you’re tossing that six-pack of soda into the trash, consider turning off all your plumbing too—because your tap water might be harming your brain as well. Conspiracy theorists will be pleased to know that a 2012 study confirms a link between high levels of fluoride in water and decreased intelligence.
The researchers reviewed data from twenty-seven previous studies, each examining different fluoride exposure levels across various regions. They found that in every case, children living in areas with high fluoride concentrations had significantly lower IQs. While fluoride is believed to be most detrimental to developing brains in young children, there is little research on its effects on adults—except for numerous animal studies where it almost always proves fatal.
4. Stress
Reason: Stress Impairs Your Brain's Ability To Handle Stress
Stress is a natural part of the college experience – it’s your first time away from home, your grades determine your future, and this pressure builds up into a constant, looming presence in your life. Unfortunately, living in this environment makes it more difficult to effectively handle stress when it arises.
The Yale Stress Center conducted a study with 100 participants who had undergone stressful events in the past, and they discovered that the more stress someone experienced, the smaller their prefrontal cortex became. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for impulse control, emotional regulation, and also plays a crucial role in our ability to learn from our experiences. Instead of gaining wisdom from stress, we often find ourselves handling it worse as time goes on.
The research also revealed that stress reduces the number of neurons in the brain, making it more challenging for the brain to communicate and store new information.
3. Lectures
Reason: Lectures May Hinder Your Ability to Think Critically
In terms of time spent, much of college revolves around attending lectures. It’s the primary way we absorb information. However, it turns out that this very method could be limiting your decision-making skills. Researchers from Emory University in Atlanta conducted an fMRI study to observe how twenty-four participants responded to financial choices. Sometimes, they were given advice from an 'expert,' and at other times, no advice was offered.
The results were striking: the participants almost always accepted the so-called expert's advice without question, even when it involved greater risks. However, when no advice was provided, the brain scans revealed that they became more engaged in independently weighing the potential risks and rewards, forming their own decisions in the process.
But hey, not everything about college is terrible. At least they're not deceiving you, right?
2. Weed
Reason: Yep, Weed’s a Factor Too
Turns out marijuana might not be doing you any favors. In fact, long-term use can lead to various cognitive issues. It's always tricky to study the lasting effects of any substance, but the Dunedin Study managed to do a thorough investigation. The study followed over 1,000 participants from birth to thirty-eight years of age. The researchers assessed their cognitive abilities at age thirteen, well before any marijuana use, and then tested them again at regular intervals for the next twenty-five years, comparing those who admitted to regular marijuana use with those who didn’t smoke.
They discovered that continuous marijuana use resulted in a rise in neuropsychological problems, particularly among those who began smoking as teenagers. Now, by including this entry, we’re not claiming that all college students are marijuana users, but let’s be honest, they pretty much are.
1. Sleep
Reason: Disrupted Sleep Patterns Can Make You Twice As Dumb
As if stress wasn’t already overwhelming, those all-nighters and ridiculously early mornings might be lowering your brainpower permanently. A study from the University of California, Berkeley, investigated the impact of changing sleep schedules on hamsters. The findings? After a month of having their sleep cycle altered by six hours every few days, the hamsters produced fifty percent fewer neurons. Some couldn’t even find their exercise wheel anymore.
Even more concerning, the hamsters continued to experience mental decline for nearly a month after returning to a normal sleep schedule, demonstrating that frequently disrupting your sleep pattern can have lasting consequences. The study likened it to jet lag, but in reality, it’s much like staying up late for several nights in a row and then trying to revert back to a regular sleep routine. But if you really need to cram for that test, you could always consider taking some Viagra.
