Mental and Behavioral Health
The National Society of Collegiate Scholars and Active Minds released new data on the mental health of high-achieving college students as well as information on how universities can help students facing mental health challenges. The data is based on a survey of college students who have a grade point average of 3.4 or above. The survey found that 91% of these students have felt overwhelmed by the number of responsibilities they have, and two-thirds of the respondents felt the need to seek out mental health services in the last year. The survey found that many respondents cited stigma toward mental health, a lack of financial resources, or a preference for dealing with issues on their own, as reasons they had not sought help. Laura Horne, the chief program officer of Active Minds, said professors and academic advisors do not have to be mental health experts to help students facing mental health challenges. “(Faculty) can help a struggling student just by being there for them,” Horne said. The organizations recommend that faculty validate the feelings of their students and emphasize that asking for help is normal. They also encourage faculty to include contact information for mental health services on their syllabi or provide a list of these resources to individual students who come to them for help, practice self-care themselves, include well-being skills in their curriculum, and ask administrators to provide more resources and training surrounding mental health issues.
The Chronicle reports on a growing movement in collegiate sports where student athletes are challenging their athletics departments to treat mental illness with the same urgency as musculoskeletal injury. Notionally, professional athletes are opening up about their own struggles with mental illness, and the NCAA has put more emphasis on the issue. More colleges are screening students for mental-health problems, and some are adding sports psychologists to their athletics staff.
University of Southern California Vice President of Student Affairs Winston Crisp sent a letter to parents about student mental wellbeing where he acknowledged a lack of communication from the school regarding concerns of mental health, and assured parents commitment to student well-being. Since the start of the school year, at least five students have passed away. According to the letter, the University has expanded services at the counseling center, hiring 12 additional counselors in recent months. Crisp wrote, “We are only at the beginning. We will continue to improve [University mental health resources] by adding more resources and services as necessary. In the meantime … we are reviewing and revising our care model including intake, and screening and referral to ensure that we can provide the best possible services.” He also wrote that the addition of long-term mental health services the health center will be implemented by summer 2020. Crisp asked parents to alert the University via Trojans Care for Trojans or the new 411 helpline if they notice anything unusual in their communication with their students, saying that parents are still students’ first point of contact when they might be struggling.
A recent Wharton study showed that practicing mindfulness for just a few minutes a day can significantly improve students’ academic and professional performances. Wharton Management professor Lindsey Cameron’s research concluded that just seven minutes of mindfulness every day can make students and employees more productive in their work. Cameron said the act of meditating for seven minutes is “more on the surface level,” where therapies and some of the other student mental health groups can help students deal with “deeper level issues.”
According to the Daily Campus, the student newspaper of the University of Connecticut, the Office of the Dean has sought to make students aware of their options when considering a leave of absence due to a mental health issue. The Associate Dean of Students, Maureen Armstrong, told the paper that the university’s approach to handling students facing mental health crises is holistic. “The university takes a holistic approach to students who feel they might be unable to continue due to health issues,” Armstrong said. “And though the by-laws of the university’s senate determine that students need to be in good academic standing to have a leave processed, there are still options for those who might not fit this criteria.” If a student feels the need to request a leave of absence, the Office of the Dean will honor that and work out the details at a later date, Armstrong said. “We don’t make guarantees of anything, but we certainly work hard to provide students with the support they need to help them get back on track, because ultimately the goal is a degree,” Armstrong said.
Grinnell College’s Student Health and Wellness (SHAW) is straining their resources to get students what they need, according to The Scarlet and Black, the school’s student newspaper. “We’re aware of the limited resources and the feeling that creates for students, and we find that unfortunate. We want to be able to offer everything we possibly can,” said SHAW’s Counseling Director, Charles Bermingham. The Scarlet and Black reports that one-on-one counseling options for students are already full for the rest of the semester, leaving students to either find a counselor in the community (and pay for their services) or choose not to pursue individual counseling. “[That decision] creates this environment where students who have more access to money can see somebody, and students who don’t, can’t,” said one student. SHAW also offers group therapy, a 24/7 resource called the Need-To-Talk line, and Let’s Talk, a drop-in consultation service for students who have specific concerns. SHAW has also introduced an updated version of drop-in appointments, filled on a first-come-first-served basis.
University of Arizona opened a second counseling center this fall, cutting appointment wait times for students in half – from four weeks to two. The new center has nine additional counselors, bolstering the full-time equivalent of 18 counselors serving the main campus. Two more counselors will be added by July 2020. According to a 2017 UA report, mental health hospitalizations of students increased by 63% since 2011-12. CAPS has also seen a 30% increase in the number of students it served in the past five years, from nearly 2,800 students in 2012-13 to 3,600 in 2016-17.
A University of Washington study examined the prevalence of discrimination events and how these events affect college students in their daily lives. Over the course of two academic quarters, the researchers compared students’ self-reports of unfair treatment to passively tracked changes in daily activities, such as hours slept, steps taken or time spent on the phone. On average, students who encountered unfair treatment were more physically active, interacted with their phones more and spent less time in bed on the day of the event. The researchers also found that discrimination is associated with increased depression and loneliness, but less so for people with better social support. “These results help underscore the deep impacts of discrimination on mental health, and the importance of resources like social support in helping to reduce the impact of discrimination in the long term,” said Paula Nurius, a professor in the UW School of Social Work.
Diversity and Inclusion
Lawyers representing students, the Compton Unified School District, civil-rights groups, and college-access organizations said that they planned to sue the University of California unless it drops its ACT/SAT requirement. In a letter to the system’s regents, the lawyers allege that the testing requirement violates state civil-rights laws. They describe their clients as well-qualified students who as a result of the requirement “have been subject to unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, disability, and wealth.” The potential lawsuit would be the first to take direct aim at a college’s ACT/SAT requirement, and comes as the university system is scrutinizing its reliance on college-entrance exams. Recently, members of UC’s Academic Senate began a study to determine whether the ACT and SAT are useful measures of academic performance.
Police and the FBI are investigating flyers found on Western Connecticut State University‘s campus that read “It’s OK to be White” and “Islam is right about women.” Investigators have yet to identify who produced the flyer. The flyer incident happened weeks after two University of Connecticut students were caught on video shouting a racial slur outside campus housing. They were arrested and charged.
John J. DeGioia, President of Georgetown University, announced plans to redress a historical wrong, funding community-based projects to help descendants of the enslaved people who were sold in the early 19th century to pay off debts at the school. The university said it will ensure $400,000 or more a year in donations are collected to underwrite the effort. Student activists, who have also worked to promote the idea of reparations at the school, are disappointed the plan is different from one undergraduates had conceived and endorsed in the spring. In a statement, the activist group Students for GU272 said that the university’s plans “directly negate the wishes” of students who had voted for reparations and “was made without student or descendant input.” “I think they just decided to ignore our vote,” said Maya Moretta, a junior who is a member of the group that advocated for reparations for the 272 enslaved people sold in 1838, because the university plans to raise private money for the effort, rather than relying on student fees. Georgetown officials said many positive responses have arrived from students, graduates and faculty to the plan put forth by the university.
The University of Washington’s College Republicans chapter will lose its status as a registered student organization after both state and national College Republican groups revoked its charter for “hurtful and inappropriate conduct.” The group, whose controversial actions have included an “affirmative-action bake sale” that based prices on buyers’ race and gender, has vowed to fight the decision. Since its charter was revoked by the College Republican National Committee in 2018, the UW College Republicans chapter has continued to engage in “hurtful and inappropriate conduct,” prompting both the state and national oversight groups to permanently rescind the charter, according to a letter from the national chairman of the College Republican National Committee to the UW’s vice president for student life. “We will have nothing to do with this unauthorized group, as it is the policy of the CRNC that campuses be free from hurtful or inappropriate speech and be a forum for safe, lively, and diverse opinions being expressed from every corner of America,” it said.
The number of foreign students earning degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics has risen steadily for decades, according to new data from the Congressional Research Service. About 22% of all STEM degrees in the U.S. were conferred to foreign students in the 2016-17 academic year, up from 11% in 1988-89. That share could shrink as colleges report declines in enrollment of foreign students.
Inmates at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute can now apply to take Boston College accredited liberal-arts courses. Boston College’s Prison Education Program was launched in September as part of a nationwide group of correctional education programs under the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI). Since its establishment in 1999 at Bard College, BPI has issued over 50,000 credits and 550 degrees. “It was founded really in a recognition of the confluence of two essential social crises in the United States,” said Max Kenner, executive director at BPI. “The first being what we now call mass incarceration and the other, being the way we provide higher education in a democratic and accessible way to diverse communities within the United States.” The program’s courses are taught by BC instructors and based on similar curriculum to those used in traditional undergraduate classes.
According to a report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling, despite aggressive campaigns from anti-testing activists to eliminate the SAT and ACT as factors in college admissions, a significant number of institutions still consider the standardized assessments to be an important metric in judging prospective students’ academic potential. Slightly fewer than half of colleges and universities that responded believe the two tests are “considerably important” in admissions.
According to a Chronicle interactive report, the campaign to force out Jack Thomas, the African American former president of Western Illinois University, exposed racial fault lines in a mostly white town. As the article indicates, there were certainly issues at the school when he ultimately decided to resign; enrollment was down by 35 percent, more than 100 people had lost their jobs, and academic majors were closing. But according to the Chronicle, criticism of Thomas has a way of circling back to race. In several instances, faculty members argued that Thomas had hired unqualified black people or admitted underprepared students of color. “It does appear that the president promotes diversity over excellence,” one critic said. And in emails provided to The Chronicle through a public-records request, a Western Illinois trustee worried about the “ethnicity” of the university.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
Women’s-rights advocates say Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ nationwide changes to sexual assault policies amount to sex discrimination, but a federal judge ruled that the guidelines can’t be challenged in court. DeVos’ changes mean that schools could allow an accuser to be questioned about her sexual history, could ignore off-campus incidents, and could prohibit the accuser from appealing an unfavorable verdict, allowing only the accused student to appeal – all changes from the previous standards.
The Chicago Tribune reports on Swarthmore College, where, last spring, a trove of internal fraternity documents describing horrendous behavior was leaked and published by two campus media organizations. Students held multiple protests and demanded that the college’s two on-campus fraternities be permanently closed. The fraternities ultimately agreed to disband, and Swarthmore ended Greek life. But reports from two investigations commissioned by the college show that investigators failed to find evidence confirming misconduct by current students in the fraternities, and that the protesters’ tactics were at times so aggressive that administrators feared for their safety.
Student Success
According to a study published in the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, supportive messages from counselors increase a high school senior’s rate of completing college financial aid applications by 17%, and those students are 8% more likely to enroll in college than peers who do not receive such messages. According to the study’s authors, text-based outreach from counselors makes a difference because students could respond to them and receive direct support. Students who received texts were 20% more likely to enroll in four-year colleges and 9% less likely to enroll in two-year colleges than peers who didn’t receive these “nudges.”
The University of Arizona Foundation has launched a $50 million fundraising campaign that aims to provide students with support and remove obstacles to their success. UA President Robert C. Robbins said the campaign will allow the university to enhance student services such as tutoring, mental health resources and career services, as well as provide scholarships to students with financial need. “We are doubling down on our commitment to student success,” Robbins said. “The university is invested in making college accessible and affordable to all students no matter where they come from.” Recently, the university also announced the creation of the Pell Pledge Grant, which will cover the cost of tuition for many low-income students.
A new report, “Some College, No Degree,” shines a spotlight on people who have attended some college but don’t have a degree and are no longer enrolled. “Potential completers” are what the report’s authors, researchers at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, call the 3.5 million adults. “Potential completers are the most relevant subgroup for institutions looking to increase enrollments today, as well as for policymakers looking to reach state and national postsecondary-attainment goals tomorrow,” the report says.
Free Speech
The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor will disband its bias-response team as part of a settlement with a nonprofit group that argued that the team stifled students’ free speech. In September, after a federal district-court judge ruled against the nonprofit, Speech First, a federal appeals court vacated the decision, ruling that the bias-response team used the “implicit threat of punishment and intimidation to quell speech” on the campus. Michigan was among hundreds of colleges and universities to establish bias-response teams in recent years as white-supremacist groups marched on campuses and incidents of hate speech and hate crimes became more common. Speech First reported that the team had investigated more than 150 cases of alleged “expressions of bias” found in posters, fliers, social media, whiteboards, verbal comments, and classroom behavior since April 2017.
College Affordability
Based on projections by The Hechinger Report using annual college cost growth rates from 2008 to 2018, the University of Chicago is projected to cost $100,000 a year by 2025. That would likely make the University the first college or university in the United States to break the six-figure mark. Harvey Mudd College in California, Columbia University in New York and Southern Methodist University in Texas are projected to cost almost as much. While rising education costs and more amenities and luxury housing have played a role in pressing up the cost of college attendance, a great deal of college tuition inflation has been driven by an enrollment strategy that relies heavily on tuition discounting. Schools identify those willing and able to pay their advertised tuition or “sticker price” through savings or loans, and use them to balance out the costs of students who would be more likely to enroll at other institutions due to financial concerns or academic competitiveness.
NPR covers the report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy that shows that flagship universities are unaffordable for low income students. According to NPR, flagships are generally the most well-resourced public universities in their respective states yet only four public flagship universities are affordable for students from low-income families. Access to public universities can be critical for low-income students because those institutions can serve as engines for upward mobility. Mamie Voight, one of the study’s authors, said that these schools aren’t living up to their responsibility to remain affordable. “They are a public institution. They are funded by state taxpayer dollars,” she explains. “They have an incredibly important role to play in both preparing the workforce for tomorrow and educating the workforce for tomorrow.”
According to The Hechinger Report, Louisiana lawmaker’s historically severe cuts to higher education has most heavily impacted low income students. With every budget cut, universities in turn raised tuition to keep the doors open. But Louisiana’s middle-class and affluent students have been shielded from these ballooning tuition bills due to a program known as TOPS. The TOPS scholarship was meant to provide Louisiana’s best and brightest with free tuition at any public university in the state. The program originally had an income cap to ensure that it helped those who needed it most but in the late 1990s, lawmakers removed that cap. Since then, the program has morphed into one that largely benefits middle-class families and siphons much-needed funds away from poorer students. Data from The Hechinger Report’s Tuition Tracker shows that at public universities across the state, tuition bills have skyrocketed for the lowest-income students.
U.S. House committee passed legislation, sponsored by House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., that aims to help more Americans of all backgrounds obtain high-quality college degrees by increasing affordability, accountability and accessibility in higher education. The measure would fund states that waive tuition at community colleges and invest in their public colleges and universities, which proponents say would lower costs for students and families. It would also increase federal education grants, crack down on “predatory” for-profit colleges and strengthen supports for low-income students and students of color, among other things. The bill – an update of the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965, which hasn’t been reauthorized in more than a decade – cleared the House Education and Labor Committee on party lines. The committee’s 28 Democrats all voted in its favor and the committee’s 22 Republicans all voted in opposition.
Hunger and Homelessness
College food service provider Sodexo announced that it is partnering with the nonprofit Swipe Out Hunger and 13 universities to pilot a program through which the company will provide two free meals at campus dining halls for every full-time meal plan sold. Sodexo estimates that the pilot group’s “Meal Swipe Banks” will yield 25,000 free meals each year for students with demonstrated need.
Physical Health
A study being conducted by professors and students at the University of Connecticut is focusing on helping students make smart choices when selecting what to eat. “Mindful Eating” is a 12-week program in which participants will receive daily nutritional messages during the week. “The daily messages include basic nutrition and mindful eating information, in addition to recipes, supplemental readings, weekly polls questions and motivational pictures,” said one of the student researchers Amy Fasciano. “We hope that these supplemental materials and poll questions will improve participant engagement and participation to promote healthy eating.”
