Mental and Behavioral Health
As more technology companies offering mental health support for college students enter the market, experts are looking for evidence that they work. A roundtable discussion at the Guardian‘s office in London explored how universities can use data to identify at-risk students, whether new apps developed to support those with mental health problems actually work, and what the benefits and limits of technology might be. The roundtable, which included senior academics, technology experts and others with in-depth knowledge of student mental health, agreed that technology could only provide part of the solution. Til Wykes, professor of clinical psychology and rehabilitation at King’s College London said evidence for the effectiveness of most mental health apps was scant. The panel advised that young people needed to be involved in researching and testing apps properly and in understanding what the real chances of success were. One participant warned that students sometimes feel they are being given short shrift with digital solutions rather than one on one counseling, and that solutions should be targeted at preventing – not just responding – to mental health problems.
Over the past year, University of California Davis initiated a number of changes to meet students’ rising demand for mental-health and counseling services. A 2017 audit found that UC Davis was unprepared to meet its students’ mental-health needs, concluding that UC Davis lacked a strategic plan for counseling services and indicated that the existing services were not adequately accessible. UC Davis Chancellor Gary May assembled a mental health task force, which recommended changes such as increasing accessibility to counseling services, hiring additional counselors and case managers to help students get connected to resources both on and off campus, and a greater emphasis on providing services for students from marginalized communities. UC Davis has expanded a series of workshops called “You Got This,” which is designed to help students learn coping skills. Additionally, Counseling Services obtained funding to provide free tele-health appointments, where students video chat with mental health counselors. The coupons that give students free and unlimited tele-health sessions will also be available for the 2019-20 academic year
Laurie Santos, a psychology professor at Yale University who teaches the most popular course in the school’s history, “Psychology and the Good Life,” presented the “shortest possible crash-course version of the class” at the Aspen Ideas Festival. The lessons of the class address fundamental features of the human mind that make it difficult to appreciate good things. “Our minds are filled with a ton of little glitches that make it hard to enjoy the great things that we have,” as Santos puts it. To counteract the “glitches” Santos advised festival attendees to spend time and money on things that don’t last as long, set aside time to be grateful, and periodically force oneself to try living without the things one has become accustomed to, or ask what it would be like to go without.
The Chronicle of Higher Education obtained pharmacy records for dozens of universities that reveal the immense volume of antidepressants stocked in campus-run pharmacies. Experts say it is fairly easy to get prescriptions for these medications and, according to the pharmacy records, that has resulted in a high volume of prescriptions written in recent years. According to the Chronicle, the increasing reliance on prescriptions, combined with the ever-present shortage of counselors on college campuses, suggests that many students may not have ready access to the recommended treatment for depression in many cases: a combination of counseling and medication.
To better understand the outsized contributors to social and academic pressure, researchers at the College of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts are using artificial intelligence to predict stress levels from questionnaire and smartphone sensor data. They report that their model obtained a 45.1% improvement in predicting stress compared with the baseline on a data set of student sleep patterns, activity, conversation, location, information regarding mental health (like stress levels), and more. “With the growing popularity of wearable devices, the ability to utilize physiological data collected from these devices to predict the wearer’s mental state, such as mood and stress, suggests great clinical applications, yet such a task is extremely challenging,” wrote the coauthors.
Penn State University Park campus has introduced wellness retreats to help students alleviate stress. When surveyed following the retreat, students reported a 100% satisfaction rate, with an overall 10% reduction of perceived stress and a 10% increase in general self-efficacy. “[The retreat] was relaxing and I learned a lot about myself and what I can do to control my stressors throughout the day,” said one student in a post-retreat survey. “It really helped me to relieve a lot of built-up stress that I had coming into this retreat.”
Paul Quinn College, which prides itself on admitting many students from low income neighborhoods who struggle to break the cycle of poverty, has launched an aggressive mental health campaign that offers every single incoming student the opportunity to meet with a mental health counselor to have their needs assessed, free of charge. Wellness is promoted all across campus through educational programs, exercise activities and even comedy nights. The program is meant to help students who are more likely to be suffering from trauma. According to a 2016 report, those living in poverty are about twice as likely to suffer from mental illnesses. As the clinic’s director Dr. Stacia’ Alexander summed up during this summer’s orientation, “We’re here for you. For whatever feelings you struggle with – with whatever you hide from everybody else that you think means nothing, that you think makes you out of your mind. We are here to talk to you about those feelings.”
Universities have responded to increasing rates of mental health issues by encouraging students to fight stigma and take advantage of on-campus therapists and peer support groups. But Thrive Global reports that once students graduate and enter the workplace, they are often faced with the stigma that universities have been working to eradicate. Over one third of employees fear that mentioning mental health will negatively impact their image and career. Moreover, the majority of employees claim that not only does stigma still exist in the workplace, it has intensified in the last five years. Fewer than 50 percent of employees rate their employer’s mental health services as sufficient. The article suggests that workplace mental health resources are nowhere near as developed as university psychological health services and that work cultures play a role in worsening the problem by encouraging young professionals to prioritize their career over their mental health.
The administration at UNC Chapel Hill commissioned a Mental Health Task Force in the spring of 2018 to address what is being described as “one of the most critical issues” being addressed in higher education across the country. The task force worked “to really examine the whole scope of the issue, what promising practices there are in this space and to come up with strategies that would work specifically at UNC – Chapel Hill,” according to the school’s interim vice chancellor for student affairs Christ Hurt. Chair of the system board Harry Smith said the mental health of students would be a top priority moving forward. “I think that you will see the board move swiftly with the president to try to start working to address what is no doubt a significant challenge and issue for our 235,000 students,” he said.
Diversity and Inclusion
According to a new report from the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), historically black colleges enrolled and graduated about one-fourth of all black undergraduates across 21 states and territories in 2016, although they accounted for less than 10% of all four-year institutions. The latest study follows earlier research from UNCF showing HBCUs have more success graduating low-income and “academically underprepared” black students than do non-HBCUs. HBCUs are also strong producers of black STEM graduates, the report notes, providing around one-third of those degrees across the sample. The report, “HBCUs Punching Above Their Weight,” comes as HBCUs grapple with declining enrollment and public support.
In 1838, Jesuit priests at Georgetown University sold about 300 slaves to save the school from crushing debt. Student activists on the campus have been campaigning for the slaves’ living descendants to receive some form of reparations from the university. In April, the student body passed a symbolic referendum that called on each student to pay a $27.20 fee per semester on top of their tuition bill. The money would form a fund to benefit those living descendants of the slaves, about 4,000 of whom are alive today. Now the proposal is with the university’s Board of Directors, which would need to approve it for it to take effect. Activists are accusing the board of dragging its feet, and say they are disappointed that the board did not vote on the matter at its June 6 meeting and has given no indication of when it will. However, the issue is contentious. The descendants themselves have myriad opinions about how reparations could be used to support them, and some don’t agree with reparations at all.
The Atlantic takes a look at education inequity, citing a report from the United States Department of Agriculture, that showed that, between 2000 and 2015, the college completion gap in the US widened. “The share of urban adults with at least a bachelor’s degree grew from 26 percent to 33 percent, while in rural areas the share grew from 15 percent to 19 percent,” the report found. The gap could be due, in part, to students leaving rural areas after college-or to adults with college degrees moving to urban or suburban areas in search of jobs. At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Tara Westover, the author of the memoir Educated, said, “We need to take seriously the idea that everyone deserves access to a quality education, and we need to do everything we can to make that a reality. There’s all kinds of evidence to show that education is wildly unequal, and as we allow that to continue, we’re just seeing the beginning of our political turmoil.” One potential solution is to encourage states to invest in higher education-placing more good, affordable options in places that need them. But if the trend of state disinvestment in public higher education holds, that may prove fruitless. Alaska’s governor, for example, cut $130 million from the state university system’s budget on Friday; coupled with previous cuts, the state system has lost 41 percent of its state-supported budget this year.
Portland, Maine recently received hundreds of African asylum seekers who had found their way to the U.S. border. They were identified by an advocacy group and bused to the city, which is known for welcoming refugees. The University of Southern Maine, Southern Maine Community College, and Portland Adult Education are on the front lines of an effort to help these “New Mainers” navigate the education system. In a video, the Chronicle talked with Glenn A. Cummings, president of the University of Southern Maine, about how it is working with refugees who do not have the credentials held by legal immigrants, and how he seeks a balance between being welcoming and inclusive but not neglecting the disadvantaged citizens of Maine who want a higher education. One answer is private donors who step in to help. The Chronicle also spoke with representatives of nonprofit groups, including the founder of ProsperityME, which offers scholarships and financial education to asylum seekers about the increasingly difficult path to getting the education they need to join the workforce.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will decide whether it was legal for the Trump administration to attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2017. The Trump administration has contended the DACA program, which allows nearly 700,000 people to study and work in the U.S. in two-year blocks, is illegal because it was set up through an executive order. Several lower courts have blocked the Trump administration from phasing out the program. The Supreme Court is expected to reach a decision that will determine DACA’s fate in 2020.
Undocumented students at U.S. colleges and universities have faced growing uncertainty in recent years, and things have gotten more tense with the Trump administration’s recent announcement that they would be stepping up enforcement of deportation orders. The uncertainties have forced many colleges and universities to walk a fine line between supporting their students and avoiding obstructing justice. Fiona Lytle, the chief communications officer and legislative liaison for the Colorado Community College System, said that the balancing act means providing resources to concerned students who seek support and complying with legal requests that may be made by federal law enforcement agencies. In response to the Trump’s announcement of ramped-up deportation enforcement, Trinity Washington University president Patricia McGuire sent a letter to the university community announcing the news and encouraging students to reach out to the university if they felt the need. Noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated that it will entertain brief arguments regarding the fate of DACA when it returns for the fall term, McGuire said the development likely means “another year of anxiety and more political spin.” She said, “It’s really sad. The DACA students here at Trinity are among our best students. Their academic performance is off the charts. They are such productive human beings, any country, any city would be delighted to have them as their citizens.”
According to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League, white supremacist propaganda is spreading on U.S. college campuses, with more cases of extremist advertising in spring 2019 than any semester before it. The organization found 313 incidents involving white supremacist fliers, posters and stickers used for recruiting on campuses from September 2018 through May 2019. That is a 7% jump from the number of incidents the ADL identified during the 2017-18 academic year, which saw a 77% rise in extremist messaging from the year prior. Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive and national director at the ADL, said that college campuses are a target-rich environment for white supremacist recruiting efforts, as extremist groups aim to increase their numbers among impressionable young people. “This is alarming-the idea that these extremists have been able to move from the margins to the mainstream, and the idea that they find that colleges are places where they can peddle their poison,” he said.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ affirmed the campus’s support for undocumented students and staff members in a statement sent to the campus community by email. The statement came after a Twitter user warned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement appeared to have arrived at Berkeley City College two days earlier, sparking more than 2,000 retweets. Berkeley City College later confirmed on Twitter that it had been visited by a Department of Homeland Security investigator. “We remain steadfast in welcoming, supporting, and building community with our undocumented students and staff,” Christ said in her statement, adding that officials have historically not conducted raids on college and university campuses.
While serving 27 years at the Maryland Correctional Institution Maurice Smith was able to complete his bachelor’s degree through the Goucher Prison Education Partnership using federal Pell grants offered through a pilot program called Second Chance Pell. Started in 2016, the program doled out $35.6 million to educate 8,800 incarcerated students at 40 institutions in its first two years, and is one of the only Obama-era education initiatives that has continued under the Trump administration. The White House has embraced the program as part of its criminal justice agenda, which aims to stymie mass incarceration and reduce recidivism. The Trump administration has pledged $28 million to extend the Second Chance Pell program through next year. Last month, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced that she was pushing for the initiative to be made permanent.
The Hechinger Report follows the journey of Danielle Metz, who after 23 years in prison, was granted clemency in 2016 by President Barack Obama and later graduated college. According to the article, just 4 percent of formerly incarcerated people have a bachelor’s degree. And now, a movement to raise that number is gaining momentum as Congress reconsiders a ban on Pell grants for prisoners, and some states seek to prevent universities from barring felons.
Beginning in 1998, Texas guaranteed admission to its most selective public universities to any student who graduated in the top 10 percent of his or her high school. The goal was to find a way to increase the enrollment of black and Latino students after a federal court banned race-based affirmative action in the state. The plan was controversial, many complaining that it would deny high-achieving students admission to the state’s top two schools, the University of Texas (UT) at Austin and Texas A&M University, College Station. But a new analysis of 20 years of data finds that the 10 percent policy did little to increase diversity or expand access to students from high schools without a tradition of regularly sending students to those universities.
In an op-ed in the Hechinger Report, Andy Van Kleunen, the CEO of National Skills Coalition, argues that Pell grants should be eligible for students enrolled in short-term job training programs, courses that are connected to a local industry, a job and higher wages. According to Van Kleunen, many students pursue higher education while balancing work and family obligations for the explicit purpose of climbing the ladder to prosperity in the job market, and Pell Grants leave these students out.
Sexual Assault & Title IX
As reported in the Chronicle, when a college professor or administrator commits sexual harassment, they are often able to resign quietly and get a new job at a different institution. This phenomenon, known as “pass the harasser,” is common in academe, but it’s come under increasing scrutiny during the #MeToo movement. In some cases, the college on the receiving end is aware of the previous misconduct and makes the hire anyway. In others, the college doesn’t know about the harassment because institutions don’t share that information. Often, colleges sign confidential settlement agreements with employees who’ve committed harassment, with no one outside of that institution knowing what they’ve done. But pressure is building on colleges to stop allowing harassers to move from job to job with no consequences. A few institutions are testing out new policies to try to bolster their reference checks, keep harassers off their campuses, and inform other colleges about employees’ past misconduct. For example, all UCDavis job postings now include a statement indicating that officials will request information about past policy violations.
The parents of a University of Utah student who was shot to death by her ex-boyfriend filed a lawsuit claiming the university had been “deliberately indifferent” to the abuse their daughter had suffered, thereby violating Title IX, the federal gender-equity law. At a news conference, Jill McCluskey said the lawsuit was “our last resort to effect positive change” at the university after her daughter, Lauren McCluskey, a 21-year-old senior, was fatally shot on the campus. Before she was killed, McCluskey had made several unsatisfactory attempts at alerting campus officials of the threats she was receiving from the accused.
Dr. George Tyndall, a former longtime gynecologist at the University of Southern California, was charged with sexually assaulting 16 women at the student health center, the first criminal counts in a case that already has seen USC offer to pay $215 million to settle potentially thousands of claims. Tyndall worked at USC for nearly three decades, and news of his arrest on 29 felony charges that could send him to prison for 53 years was welcomed by women who accuse him of misconduct and lawyers representing them.
Substance Use
The Dartmouth College Student Wellness Center has recently released the second report of a series addressing the reduction of high-risk drinking and related harms at the school. The report, entitled, “Expanding the Healthy Majority,” focuses on how to increase the number of Dartmouth students who do not report high-risk drinking in the two weeks before the survey. According to the report, this portion of the student body is already a majority at 59 percent, “contrary to common assumptions.” According to the Student Wellness Center’s website, each report will use collected data and information to make recommendations to the Dartmouth community.
Student Success
The University of Minnesota Rochester, a small school with only two bachelor’s degrees in health science and health professions, has nearly closed its achievement gap in a number of categories: students of color, students who receive Pell grants meant for low-income students and students who are the first in their families to attend college all have average four-year graduation rates that are virtually identical to the university’s overall four-year graduation rate of 56 percent.. In a time when college completion gaps are widening, this university of just over 500 undergraduates may offer a script for how to ensure that students from different backgrounds graduate at similar rates.
According to a report by the Center for American Progress, college-degree attainment rates have improved over the past decade in the United States, with the share of young adults with at least an associate’s degree rising by 20 percent, resulting in an additional five million more individuals earning a college degree. But the report shows that the gains are unevenly distributed across the country. About 35 percent of white adults in the US hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, while only 18 percent of underrepresented adults do. Overall, just 8 percent of bachelor’s degree-holders live in rural counties.
Education Dive reports that institutions across the country are adopting methods to attract, retain and ensure the success of their students, including expanding support services like academic advisement to nudging interventions. As more students take classes online, colleges are expanding their digital offerings and providing critical services that attract and retain these students, like financial aid and academic advising. Many are launching campus-wide initiatives to support students’ mental health, such as meditation or technology-free areas for napping. Other schools are implementing interventions that steer students toward better decisions without taking away their choice, or “nudges”, as a way to boost retention. Nudges often come in the form of texts or emails that alert students to important deadlines and campus resources.
The Hechinger Report created a “Game of College”, where you play to figure out if you can get into college, finish your degree and avoid taking on too much debt.
James V. Koch, a professor of economics and president emeritus at Old Dominion University, and author of the new book, The Impoverishment of the American College Student, spoke to the Chronicle about how the soaring cost of college and student-debt levels threaten to further undermine public support of the sector. He discussed why the costs of public higher education have ballooned over recent decades, how colleges can keep student debt from spiraling out of control, and why he believes that debt cancellation is a bad idea.
College Affordability
According to a new analysis by personal finance website Student Loan Hero, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center ranked just below Harvard University in the amount of loan debt originated per students. UTHSC had students borrowing an average of $25,373 in federal subsidized Direct Loans, totaling $77 million in student loan debt.
A bill that would make short-term programs eligible for Pell Grants was introduced in Congress by a bipartisan group of House lawmakers. The expansion would allow qualifying students to use Pell Grants for programs as short as eight weeks, potentially opening up the federal aid to six million more students.
Courts have sided repeatedly with student loan borrowers demanding the U.S. Education Department process their applications for debt relief, but more than 180,000 people are still waiting for a decision. Now, some of them are again turning to the courts for help. On Tuesday, seven borrowers sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her agency after the department failed to take action on their applications, some of which have languished for years. The Education Department has not approved or denied an application for debt relief in a year.
According to a briefing paper released by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), despite the fact that twenty percent of college students in the United States are raising children, the much-touted “free college” initiatives, also known as Promise programs, often “unintentionally exclude” these students when offering financial support. The institute’s analysis pointed out various restrictions and requirements in the college Promise programs that exclude students who may be most in need of support. Among the more than 300 college Promise programs in 44 states, the majority exclude students over the age of 25 – making many students who have started families ineligible for Promise financial assistance. “College Promise programs that just cover the cost of tuition and fees may not do enough to allow students with children and others with high financial need to afford to enroll,” the paper stated, and recommended allowing aid to help students cover other costs including housing, childcare, food and transportation.
In the Hechinger Report, Dr. Andre Perry, a David M. Rubenstein Fellow at The Brookings Institution, argues that Sanders’ College for All Act, which would make all public two- and four-year colleges, trade schools and apprenticeship programs tuition free is a necessity. According to Perry, if the plan has any chance of passing it must include students who don’t necessarily need the subsidy. At the state level, middle-class parents regularly push back efforts to restrict merit scholarships to low-income residents. When plans include middle-class kids as recipients, parents’ resistance may disappear. Perry writes that this political logic has allowed city leaders across the country to successfully launch expensive public preschool programs that voters are willing to pay for because everyone, or nearly everyone, has access to them.
The Journal, a podcast about money, business and power, from the Wall Street Journal, covered the free college program at Kalamazoo Valley Community College in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan. Education reporter Josh Mitchell explains that while the college initially saw a large uptick in enrollment, there was also a sharp increase in dropouts. Mitchell reports that free college does not guarantee success, and additional supports are needed for students who may not have otherwise attended college and struggle with the workload or environment.
According to a recent PayScale survey, student loan debt topped college graduates’ list of regrets, followed by area of study. Millennials (29%) were twice as likely as baby boomers (13%) to regret loans. Among the 248,000 respondents, education majors were the second-most likely group to say they had “no regrets” about their educational experience. Math and engineering majors were the least likely to regret loans.
NPR describes the person who struggles the most with student loans, the 1 million borrowers who default each year. Defaulting “is not the only sign of struggle, but it’s the worst sign of struggle,” says Ben Miller, vice president for postsecondary education at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Susan Dynarski, an economist at the University of Michigan, said, “The people having problems with their debts are those who dropped out of school after just a few courses or a year.” The default rate among borrowers who didn’t complete their degree is three times as high as the rate for borrowers who did complete.
Basic Needs: Hunger and Homelessness
In response to recommendations from an oversight committee, a permanent Basic Needs Advisory Board has been formed at UC Davis, and is set to convene in late August. In 2018, Chancellor May appointed task forces of students, faculty and staff to evaluate basic needs and available resources – one task force each for food security, mental health care and affordable housing. Emily Galindo, interim vice chancellor of Student Affairs, said in the committee’s report to the chancellor that basic needs challenges will continue to be obstacles to the success some of the student body. She said, “It is critically important that campus leadership continue to address these issues in the future.
Several states have begun to fund efforts to help students with their basic needs amid growing concern about homelessness and hunger on campus. Lawmakers in California and New Jersey recently offered new money to help public colleges support students experiencing these issues. California’s state budget proposal includes $15 million each to the University of California system and California State University (CSU) system to help students meet their basic needs. Phil Murphy, New Jersey’s Democratic governor, signed a law in May that includes a $1 million fund to support colleges as they address campus hunger.
