Brain-Boosting Drugs
13th March 2011
The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism recently described an experiment in which two student journalists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison tested how quickly they could “score” Adderall—a prescription stimulant designed to treat attention-deficit disorders, but often used by healthy students as a study aid. The reporters walked into a campus library, tapped a studying stranger on the shoulder, and were connected to an Adderall supply in less than one minute.
Concerned observers of this trend, most notably at Britain’s Academy of Medical Sciences, have characterized the use of “study drugs” as a form of cheating, akin to the use of steroids in sports. Having diagnosed the problem as an issue of unfair competition, the academy has called on universities to consider banning the use of cognition-enhancing drugs by healthy students. This past October, Wesleyan University did just that, amending its student code of conduct to recognize “misuse” of prescription drugs as a violation of the college’s prohibition against receiving “improper assistance” in completing academic work.
What a crock. College isn’t an athletic competition. The point is not for kids to ‘compete fairly’ for grades. The purpose of school is to learn, grades are how we gauge learning (for better or worse), and the objective is to have every kid earn an ‘A’ if we can do so legitimately — legitimately meaning in a way that has a rational relationship to the material being learned, rather than dumbing-down the standards with grade inflation.
If such drugs really do improve academic performance among healthy students (and the evidence is scant), shouldn’t colleges put them in the drinking water instead? After all, it would be unfair to permit wealthy students to use them if less privileged students can’t afford them.
My thought exactly.
Of course, to the extent that such drugs pose health risks, it’s prudent to restrict their use. But that seems like an argument about safety, not fairness. While safety is a valid concern, it is one that might be overcome by better drug design. If we are still troubled by the idea of a study drug that is safe and universally available, we have to look for other sources of our discomfort.
The technical term is ‘unclear on the concept’. There’s a lot of that going around.