TIME Education

Skin Cancer U? Students Tan on Campus at Top Colleges

A woman lies in a tanning booth in Anchorage, Alaska on Dec 15, 2005.
A woman lies in a tanning booth in Anchorage, Alaska on Dec 15, 2005. Al Grillo—AP

America’s top universities may be teaching a dangerous lesson about tanning.

Twelve percent of the nation’s top colleges and universities have tanning beds on campus, and nearly half have them either on campus or in off-campus housing, according to a report published online Wednesday in JAMA Dermatology.

Students can even use “campus cash” debit cards loaded up by parents for tanning at 14 percent of the 125 top colleges and universities compiled by U.S. News & World Report. And when tanning beds were offered in off-campus housing, it was free to tenants 96 percent of the time, the study found…

Your browser, Internet Explorer 8 or below, is out of date. It has known security flaws and may not display all features of this and other websites.

Learn how to update your browser