Understanding the Challenges
To be a college student in 2024 is to be surrounded by stressful events, ranging from personal matters—juggling work, family responsibilities, and financial obligations—to unprecedented global phenomena, political turmoil, and a constant stream of digital information.
“We’re living in an age of anxiety,” says Melissa Saunders, assistant director of clinical services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). “There are major life stressors going on all across the world—climate change, terrible wars, toxic political discourse—that students have no control over and are completely bombarded with all the time. That is an awful lot to handle at age 18, 19, 20.”
Impact of Societal Issues
Laura Erickson-Schroth, chief medical officer for The Jed Foundation, works as a clinician with 18- to 25-year-olds, and when clients discuss their stressors, many times they talk about societal issues such as climate change, movements for racial justice, reproductive rights, protests on campus, and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
Survey Insights
The latest Student Voice survey from Inside Higher Ed, conducted by Generation Lab, found two in five (43 percent) of students say stress is impacting their ability to focus, learn and perform well academically “a great deal.” An additional 42 percent say stress is impacting them at least “some.”
“Young people are dealing with a completely different world than we were when we were younger… Young people are thinking about world events in a way that wasn’t true always in previous generations,” Erickson-Schroth explains.
Methodology of the Survey
Inside Higher Ed’s annual Student Voice survey was fielded in May in partnership with Generation Lab and had 5,025 total student respondents. The sample includes over 3,500 four-year students and 1,400 two-year students.
The complete data set, with interactive visualizations, is available here.
Student Mental Health Ratings
Across all student respondents, fewer than half (42 percent) rate their mental health as excellent or good. Twenty-eight percent rate their mental health as fair or poor.
Some demographic groups are more likely to rate their mental health as poor, including low-income learners (15 percent), Black or African American students (12 percent), first-generation students (11 percent), and online learners (11 percent).
Top Stressors for Students
When asked what their top stressors are while in college, Student Voice respondents rank balancing their academics with personal, family, or financial responsibilities as the most stressful (47 percent).
Experts who reviewed Student Voice findings commented on how college affordability and the rising cost of living can directly relate to student mental health, as well. One-third of survey respondents name paying for college as a top stressor.
Finding Solutions
When asked which three of 11 institutional actions would most benefit their overall well-being, students overwhelmingly believe that institutions rethinking high-stakes exams would be most helpful (48 percent). The second-largest number of students identified adding mental health days to the academic calendar (37 percent).
Across the country, institutions have begun to integrate excused absences for mental health and mental health days into the academic calendar, which serve different purposes. UNC introduced institutionwide mental health breaks in fall 2020 to give students a pause from classes to focus on their health and wellness.
“They’re not using it to stay here and study or catch up on their academic work; they’re mostly going home or going out of town or doing something that gets them away from the stress, which I think has been really helpful,” Saunders says.
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