News reports on UCLA's latest annual survey of college freshmen have focused on worries about financial aid as a factor in choosing which college to attend. Well, yes. But there are brighter nuggets to be mined here.

How about this one: partying and beer-drinking in general continue their dramatic decline among incoming students. Reporting on their senior year in high school, 38 percent of students said they drank beer occasionally or frequently, the lowest figure in the 43 years of the survey and less than half of the beer-guzzling rate of the late 1970s. Reported consumption of wine and liquor are also at an all-time low. A total of 18.8 percent of new freshmen said they partied 6 or more hours a week. That's half the 1987 rate.

The annual national survey of, run by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute (HERI), reached 240,580 first-time full-time students at 340 baccalaureate colleges and universities around the country.

Political engagement is up, at least measured by the number of students who said they frequently discussed politics in the past year—35.6 percent, the highest in any presidential election in the more than four decades of the survey, exceeding 1968, the previous all-time high. The percentage of freshmen saying it is essential or very important to keep up with politics (28.1 percent in 2000—a record low) rose to 39.5 percent in 2008.