Forget heavy drinking and stolen traffic cones: students starting university this month will be spending their first week away from home enjoying night bus tours, theatre trips and salsa classes.

Freshers’ week, which will kick off later this month, has long been associated with boozy nights out in dingy clubs. But as the number of teetotal young people rises, a greater range of events is being offered to non-drinkers.

“Things are becoming less focused on going out,” said Jess Excell, student union president at Loughborough University. “There’s been a shift in attitudes – students are focused on their studies and investing in their education; perhaps it’s down to the rise in fees. People are also more conscious about spending lots of money, because everything is so much more expensive these days.”

Salsa classes, quiz nights and raveminton – where students play badminton under UV lights with glow sticks attached to their rackets to the sound of rave music – are some of the events on offer to first-year Loughborough students who would rather not spend the next day nursing a hangover.

Recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the proportion of young adults who are teetotal increased by more than 40% between 2005 and 2013, while the proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds who drank frequently has fallen by more than two-thirds.

Ralph Scott, head of citizenship at the thinktank Demos, said the stereotype of the hard-drinking student was in decline, mostly because young people were more concerned about their health and had less money to spend. “Based on the current data, we’ve probably seen the high water mark of that kind of student drinking. It looks like it’s all going in the other direction,” he said. “There will still no doubt be lots of people going out and getting drunk, but over the course of their university careers they’ll probably be doing that a lot less than students used to.”

Student unions are adapting their freshers’ week to meet these changes, according to Shelly Asquith, vice-president for welfare at the National Union of Students. “Many of them are very creative with the types of activities they offer – and this is especially where clubs and societies are really important.”

More than 20 universities have signed up to the NUS’s alcohol impact programme, which encourages responsible drinking and ensures teetotal students are not left out of social events. A further 30 have expressed interest in joining.

The London School of Economics is one of many universities putting on a broader range of freshers’ activities, including night bus tours of London, ice-skating and theatre trips. For the first time this year, its student union will be offering alternative, non-drinking events for every night of freshers’ week, said Aysha al-Fekaiki, community and welfare officer at LSE’s student union.

“I went to King’s for my undergrad, that was about three years ago, and there weren’t really any alternative events,” said Fekaiki, who is Muslim and does not drink. “I was in halls, so there was massive pressure to go out clubbing every night and drinking. I did go out but I didn’t drink, obviously. It’s really alienating if you’re not in that scene.”

In previous years, too many students have felt forced to go drinking because this was considered the only way to socialise, said Paul Greatrix, registrar at the University of Nottingham. “It was part of the culture that existed for many years in student unions, but they, the NUS and universities have all come to the realisation that we need to cater for a much more diverse range of interests. Many of our students don’t fit into the 18-year-old party animal type at all, and we have to have a broader offer. We’ve also got a very large international student intake – many of those coming from overseas choose not to drink at all, or they come from cultures where alcohol is a far less significant part of people’s lives.”

Amanda Chetwynd, provost for student experience at Lancaster University, which is offering cake decorating and sports to freshers, said students are also more focused on using their time wisely. “They know that getting a job isn’t just a matter of getting a good degree, it’s also what else have you been doing at university. People who come to campus universities are investing a lot to come here, they want to get a lot out of it.”