As we've heard, our nation's college students are quite mentally unstable. In fact, the results of a new survey say our college freshmen are more stressed than ever before. Is it debt? Insecurity? Inferiority? Or is it...rave parties?

The latest survey of more than 200,000 incoming college freshmen came with some alarming findings: only 52% say their emotional health is "above average" (which is historically low, especially when you consider that these kids can't do math); 12% say they have a disability or "medical condition;" nearly 30% say they were "frequently overwhelmed" in their senior year of high school; and a record high, 73%, say that the chief reason to go to college is to increase one's earning power, which is a god damn ticking time bomb of disappointment if we ever heard one. All of this adds up to "the steepest one-year drop in emotional health ever recorded in the survey's 45 years."

What is to be done? Perhaps our nation's worried and frustrated university leaders can take their lead from this letter to the student body yesterday from the president of the University of Southern California:

Problem: solved.

[Photo: fivedollarones]