SRHE Blog

The Society for Research into Higher Education

Tag Archives: student mental health


by 1 Comment

The increasing pressure on students after Covid-19

by Caroline Jones and Huw Bell

After the pandemic students are facing difficulties linked to health, wellbeing, finances and employment prospects; increased rents, housing shortages, zero hours contracts, the cost-of-living crisis and foodbank usage all of which can affect mental health and wellbeing. This prompted our systematic review article1, which examines topics of student engagement, belonging, alienation and resilience, and specifically identifies pressures on current HE students related to these domains.  The aim of the review was to understand better the tensions faced by HE students following their experiences of educational interruptions due to Covid-19.

Students report higher costs of living, impacting their wellbeing and ability to focus on their studies, with increased stress and a greater need to work to sustain themselves (Sutton Trust, 2023). For example, the Office for National Statistics (2023) reports some students having to skip meals due to the current UK financial crisis, and data from the Student Loans Company found that withdrawals from undergraduate courses in the two years post pandemic are increasing, averaging about 18,300 withdrawals compared to about 15,600 for the preceding three years (HM Government, 2023). While Covid-19 is not the sole cause of the cost of living crisis, it has exacerbated the pressure on students post-Covid. Many HE institutions report the effects of empty classrooms on student learning as they consider new ways of working to bring students back on campus after the pandemic (Dunbar-Morris, 2023).  About 1 in 4 students are at risk of dropping out of their university courses (Jones and Bell, 2024).

Our review found that despite the importance of HE to the development of an educated workforce (Brabner and Hillman, 2023; UPP Foundation and HEPI, 2022) and social mobility (Sutton Trust, 2021), there is a feeling that UK HEIs are moving in the wrong direction, with a sense that HE is decreasingly relevant to economic development (UPP Foundation and HEPI, 2022). We argue that institutions must develop resources and processes to help alleviate the burdens students face; the essential first step is understanding what those burdens are.

In our literature search both empirical and non-empirical data were screened for inclusion/exclusion from open and closed databases focusing on key search terms and dates. We also explored the literature relating to the personal, professional, academic, and societal pressures experienced by UK HE students. In total 59 publications were examined covering the period of the pandemic up to 2023. 

The key findings were:

  1. The effects of Covid-19 have increased pressure on HE students in multifaceted and interconnecting ways covering personal, professional, academic, and societal aspects of daily life. This directly influences student mental health and wellbeing and thus student engagement.
  2. Post-pandemic, students’ mental health and wellbeing are significantly affecting levels of resilience and coping strategies in personal, professional, academic, and societal aspects of daily life, with a direct impact on student retention.
  3. Issues facing the cohort of students currently at school, such as increased stress and anxiety, are likely to affect future HE attendance, engagement, sense of belonging, alienation and resilience.

The findings led to the following recommendations:

  1. Government and HEIs need to do more to address the macro, meso and micro effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the student population, identifying areas of increased pressure for HE students related to the personal, professional, academic, and societal aspects of students’ daily life, which directly influence student mental health and wellbeing and thus student engagement.
  2. Further focussed research is needed into post-pandemic institutional support systems and pedagogical strategies to recognise the support that has been implemented to improve students’ mental health and wellbeing.
  3. HEIs could examine the effects of stress and anxiety resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic for future students and consider strategic plans to continue to support a sense of belonging, and resilience practices to reduce alienation and increase student engagement and retention.
  4. HEIs could develop or use new conceptual tools and theories (for example: Jones, 2021; Jones, 2023), to better assess support needs for current and future students.
  5. Strategies to increase students’ resilience and coping skills post-pandemic aligned to personal, professional, academic, and societal aspects of daily life would significantly benefit mental health and wellbeing long term and thus student retention.

The results and recommendations from this systematic literature review are the scaffold for further qualitative research currently being undertaken into the pressures that HE students are experiencing in the wake of Covid-19. Staff and students are taking part in interviews and focus groups to explore the wider contextual issues associated with feelings of pressure relating to personal, professional, academic and societal influences in the post pandemic context. Many universities have invested in and extended their health, wellbeing and student services to support students, demonstrating the sector’s recognition of many of the challenges post Covid-19 students are facing. Our research will look at existing and improving support practices, systems and plans that HEIs are already implementing to support students in recognition of the many disruptions and challenges from the fall out of Covid-19.

Caroline Jonesis an applied social sciences teaching professional with extensive experience working in and across the education sector, including lecturing/programme leading in HE.  Currently employed as a Tutor based within the Health and Education Faculty at Manchester Metropolitan University.  Experience of External Examining and Peer Reviewing. Research interests include Leadership and management, risk, resilience and mental health, social mobility and social policy, widening participation and disadvantage. Originator of the Psychosocial and Academic Trust Alienation (PATA) theory. Twitter: @caroline_JonesSFHEA. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-jones-1bab40b3/

Dr Huw Bell is Reader in Teaching and Learning at Manchester Metropolitan University. Research focuses on teaching and learning L1 grammar in schools and universities in the UK, teachers’ attitudes to and beliefs about grammar and their impact on teaching, teachers’ enactment of the National Curriculum, and student life post-Covid. Email: h.bell@mmu.ac.uk.

  1. SRHE members can access the full article by logging in to www.srhe.ac.uk > My Account > Access to HE Journals > Taylor & Francis online > Perspectives ↩︎


by

Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way

Sam Gyimah MP, Minister of State for Universities and Science

Dear Minister

“Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”

If asked to sum up in a single word the direction of higher education policy from 2010 onwards, I think that many of us who try to follow Government thinking on these matters might say that the word would be “markets”. In successive White Papers and speeches, ministers have insisted that fee-paying students should see themselves as customers buying services from a university provider, which in turn should be competing with other providers in the higher education marketplace to offer the best value for money to student customers. In this way, your predecessors have argued, quality would go up and costs would come down, as happens in most markets for consumer goods. The Government has encouraged this trend by demanding that universities provide more information on which student-customers might base their purchasing decisions – most recently the TEF and the LEO data – and by encouraging new entrants into the marketplace with the aim of sharpening competition further.

Many of us in universities rather doubted that trying to create a straightforward market-type relationship between universities and their students was the best way to organise teaching and learning.  For a start, there is little evidence that students themselves want a relationship on these terms: the great majority of students surveyed in the HEPI 2018 Student Academic Experience Survey, for example, arguably preferred a pre-2004 Act, certainly a pre-2011 White Paper, funding model. I think that one reason for this – paying lower fees is no doubt another – is because they understand that in order to learn effectively they must engage with the academic life of the university in a way that is qualitatively different to, say, my engagement with Sainsbury’s when I go shopping there. Sainsbury’s does not expect its customers to help create the products which appear on its shelves; and if I’m unimpressed with them today, and I can see what Tesco are up to tomorrow. I have made no particular commitment to the Sainsbury’s way of shopping. Forgive me if this seems terribly obvious, but it has not always been clear that ministers fully appreciated this distinction.

Although many of us didn’t much like its implications, we did at least think we knew that Government saw our relationship with our students in these transactional, market-based terms. But then, Minister, along you come saying that, on the contrary, we should be in loco parentis to our students, acting (for instance) as go-betweens with their parents or guardians if we have concerns about their mental health (as reported in The Guardian, 28 June). This is not just overthrowing normal market relationships – Sainsbury’s in truth couldn’t care less about my personal well-being – it is redefining universities’ relationships with their students, and in an unhelpful way. (Having a duty of care towards both students and staff members is a different matter.) If I may say so, this has the distinct feel of political grandstanding, wanting to be seen to be acting decisively in response to – what, exactly? Of course, mental illness is desperately serious for the families and friends of those suffering from its various forms, needing the involvement of skilled professionals. A particular concern may be that suicide could result from overlooking a person’s symptoms. (Though suicide in the UK is actually a good-news story – so to speak – as ONS data show that the number of suicide deaths has been falling steadily over recent decades. Middle-aged, disadvantaged men are most likely to commit suicide – and they don’t constitute a large part of the student demographic.)

But what should be the role of a university in relation to its adult students with mental health problems? Nicola Barden writing for WonkHE on 28 June (do you read it, Minister? – you should) identifies a few of the problems which the proposed opt-in system, allowing universities to contact a student’s parents or other nominated individuals in the event of a mental health crisis, will create. Any social worker will tell you that relationships within families can be difficult in ways that outsiders can’t immediately detect: any member of university staff intruding here must be certain that they will not cause further harm – and how can they know that for sure? Imagine a situation where a parent of a student with mental health difficulties believes that the university will contact them in the event of a crisis – only for the student to have withdrawn that consent subsequently, not wanting their family to be involved. The university will then be in an impossible situation, having made commitments to both parties (as they will see it).

We’re operating, Minister, in a Government-mandated market. Universities should support their students in their academic work, but should not set themselves up to fail as substitute families. That historically never was their role; your Government’s market-focused policies have now put it completely beyond reach.

SRHE member Paul Temple, Centre for Higher Education Studies, UCL Institute of Education, University College London.