I think administrating a survey, like the ALEKs, that incoming students have to take would be a good idea. This could be used to figure out if they student had any history of depression or mental instability. I do not think the difficulty of college is solely enough to cause students to harm themselves. If this is the case I believe they have some other issues.
Study groups run by upperclassmen who have taken the courses previously and did well. This would also be a good way for young students to develop better studying habits.
Letter grades could be reduced, but it would be hard for employers to know who is right for a job. I also think this might make students become more lazy because school would be easier.
I don’t think offering more organizations to help reduce stress would really improve anything. Students get stressed because they procrastinate and cannot cope with the mass amount of work they have to do at the last minute.
I agree that study groups run by those who have taken the class are very helpful. Making school easier is not the answer to reducing stress, but making students work better and harder is. Organizations that provide things like pizza parties do little to help calm students down and only serve as a distraction to their work. But providing counseling like CAPS does help a lot because most of the time, students just need someone to talk to and vent about their problems.
Some students are solely stressed because they put their work off to the last second, but most people who are very stressed are just stressed from the day-to-day activity of their lives. I have friends who are engineering majors frequently say that they can’t keep up with the assignments each week, that they have no idea what it is they’re doing, and that they always feel on the verge of being crushed by some big exam. That does not seem what college really should be like.