Students nap for Napster

American University is one of the latest schools to realize that students aren't nearly as excited as the university administrations have assumed they would be. Their semester-long trial of Ruckus, which provides music, movies, and a degree of social networking, was met with little interest. 36 percent of students flat out said that Ruckus should be nixed entirely, and 41 percent said that Ruckus should be only made available to those who want it (i.e., no forced enrollment). A whopping 47 percent of students surveyed said that they never even used Ruckus, and here's the best part: it was free. That's right: half of the student body didn't even bother to use this service at a time when it cost them nothing.

The University of Rochester, which was one of the first schools to get on board with Napster, conducted a survey last fall (PDF) that cast some light on how Napster use fares on campus.

Napster is used as a streaming audio service, and that's about it. Of the nearly 350 students surveyed, not one of them actually bought a song off Napster. They'll stream music and some will use tethered downloads, but no one is buying. Let me rephrase that: no one is buying from Napster. 56 percent of students are turning to other services when it's time to buy music. Of those, 71 percent are buying from the iTunes Music Store.

But wait, it gets worse. In a more recent survey conducted but not yet published, it has been revealed that only 8 percent of eligible subscribers even responded to the survey, and of those 8 percent, only 24 percent were even registered to use Napster.