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In late August I wonder how often people skip pricey, nonrefundable experiences that they’ve planned for years. Then I fantasize about buying college students old-fashioned alarm clocks.

Depression and anxiety are prevalent on campus, and high rates of absenteeism aren’t helping. A Harvard study noted attendance dropped from 79% at the beginning of the year to 43% at semester’s end. At Harvard, where tuition and housing costs some $70,000 a year, each missed class amounts to several hundred dollars.

As a psychologist, my student patients tell me skipping class is practical—attendance isn’t mandatory and lectures are accessible online. The mindset is that there’s little benefit to sitting in a room with peers while engaging with prospective mentors. Yet these young adults never contemplated enrolling in more affordable online schools.

Cutting class also entails health risks. Getting up for lectures each day will help you cultivate good sleep habits, since one way to treat or prevent insomnia is to maintain a set wake time. If you stow your smartphone and mindfully participate, not only will you actually learn, but you may find yourself less stressed than when passively scrolling through social media or frenetically texting. Your British literature discussion may prove a nice distraction from ruminating about your relationships. And sitting in a room full of people you have something in common with is an opportunity to create meaningful connections and feel less alone.

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Attention all you happy high school graduates about to go off to college, as well as the many others returning for another year of higher education. Grandsons Stefan and Tomas, that includes you.

Whatever you may think can get in the way of a successful college experience, chances are you won’t think of one of the most important factors: how long and how well you sleep. And not just on weekends, but every day, Monday through Sunday.

Studies have shown that sleep quantity and sleep quality equal or outrank such popular campus concerns as alcohol and drug use in predicting student grades and a student’s chances of graduating.

Although in one survey 60 percent of students said they wanted information from their colleges on how to manage sleep problems, few institutions of higher learning do anything to counter the devastating effects of sleep deprivation on academic success and physical and emotional well-being. Some, in fact, do just the opposite, for example, providing 24-hour library hours that encourage students to pull all-nighters.

(I did that only once, to study for an exam in freshman year, and fell asleep in the middle of the test. Lesson well learned!)

An all-nighter may help if all you have to do is memorize a list, but if you have to do something complex with the information, you’ll do worse by staying up all night, J. Roxanne Prichard, an expert on college sleep issues, told me. After being awake 16 hours in a row, brain function starts to decline, and after 20 hours awake, you perform as if legally drunk, she said.

Many college-bound kids start out with dreadful sleep habits that are likely to get worse once the rigorous demands of college courses and competing social and athletic activities kick in.

I’ve yet to meet a parent whose teenage child, especially if male, doesn’t sleep until 11 a.m. or later on weekends, throwing their circadian clock out of whack in a perpetual struggle to make up for a serious midweek sleep debt. It’s as if they travel across three or more time zones every weekend, then spend Monday through Friday recovering from performance-robbing jet lag.

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Many students, nervous about a new environment, follow friends from high school or people whose demographic backgrounds match their own into homogeneous cocoons. That can indeed provide solace and support. But it’s also a wasted opportunity — educationally, morally, strategically. Diversity opens you to an array and wealth of ideas, and being comfortable with it is an asset in just about any workplace or career. You can decide to establish that comfort in college.

But perhaps the most important relationships to invest in are those with members of the school’s faculty. Most students don’t fully get that. They’re not very good at identifying the professors worth knowing — the ones who aren’t such academic rock stars that they’re inaccessible, the ones with a track record of serious mentoring — and then getting to know them well.

As part of my research, I collected surveys from about 30 recipients of the prestigious Mitchell scholarship, a rough analogue of the Rhodes that sends 12 recent American college graduates every year to universities in Ireland to pursue master’s degrees. (I was on the panel of judges who selected the winners from 2015 through 2017.) I asked them to reflect on college and to rank, in order of importance, such activities and dynamics as coursework, travel abroad, internships, relationships with classmates, involvement in campus groups and reading done apart from any class obligation.

Relationships with faculty members was also an option, and it was the clear winner, placed near the top by almost all of the scholars and at the top by many, including Azza Cohen, a documentary filmmaker who graduated from Princeton in 2016. To explain that ranking, she directed me to a 2014 essay of hers for The Daily Princetonian that was titled “Empty Chairs.” It charted her realization and regret that she and so many classmates skipped professors’ office hours and didn’t avail themselves of invaluable conversations and counsel. “In the routine rush to finish our assignments, sometimes the breadth of the surrounding intellectual force field slips our minds,” she wrote. She was then a sophomore, and she mended her ways.

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As students return to school, I’m reminded of the cheerful Ivy League senior who casually confessed to me earlier this year that she didn’t like to read. A student guide, she was leading my family on a campus tour.

I admired her candor and wasn’t shocked to hear she thought books were a bore. A 2015 survey by Scholastic and YouGov showed a sharp decline in the share of young people who read for pleasure—a trend I’d noticed as an adjunct writing professor when I polled my students. Though curious and ambitious, many freshmen in my classes hadn’t read a book for fun since middle school. When I wrote about it in a 2013 Journal op-ed, I heard many similar stories from readers.

Even so, as I followed our guide around the immaculate campus, I was saddened that one of its degree candidates would soon be entering the world with no love for literature. The tuition, we learned, is nearly $70,000 a year. It’s tragic that such an expensive, elite education could yield a graduate unmoved by the magic of the written word.

To encourage personal reading, universities should start by making books more visible on campus. On my family’s tours of five schools, I was struck by how few books I saw, even in the libraries. Instead of pointing to grand shelves thick with volumes, library guides invariably ushered us into media hubs with computer terminals. These newly reimagined spaces look as inviting as call centers. The sterile setting suggests reading is a rote exercise, devoid of emotion or imagination.

Of course university libraries must adapt to technology. It is also true that digital texts can yield diversion and wisdom. But in a campus culture that venerates vintage buildings and old-time traditions, universities should continue to celebrate their libraries’ printed collections, many of which contain treasures inaccessible online, as part of a past that can inform and enliven the present.

Hard-copy books can offer an enriching escape precisely because they’re not digital. If more young people would give them a chance, they might find traditional books particularly appealing—a nice tactile experience to complement their computer screens.

Hard-copy books can offer an enriching escape precisely because they’re not digital. If more young people would give them a chance, they might find traditional books particularly appealing—a nice tactile experience to complement their computer screens.

... in addition to helping students stay organized, an effective intervention may need to provide stronger incentives or specific guidance on the tasks to complete while studying.

Maybe giving advice to college students does little good.

That should probably be considered an axiom.

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Studies conducted in recent years by Gallup-Purdue also show a strong connection between certain forms of engagement in college and future job satisfaction and well-being. In particular, they found six key college experiences that correlated with how fulfilled employees feel at work and whether they thrive in life after college:

• Taking a course with a professor who makes learning exciting

• Working with professors who care about students personally

• Finding a mentor who encourages students to pursue personal goals

• Working on a project across several semesters

• Participating in an internship that applies classroom learning

• Being active in extracurricular activities

And yet, as important as these various forms of engagement seem to be, relatively few college graduates say that they experienced them. While more than 60% of graduates strongly agreed that at least one professor made them excited about learning, only 27% strongly felt that they were supported by professors who cared about them, and only 22% said the same about having a specific mentor who encouraged their goals and dreams. Just under a third strongly agreed that they had a meaningful internship or job or worked on a long-term project, while just a fifth were actively involved in extracurricular activities.

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... six key college experiences that correlated with how fulfilled employees feel at work and whether they thrive in life after college...

...changing the student experience with greater focus on faculty-student interaction, increased internships, on-the-job training and experiential learning, and creative use of technology.