College students say academic pressure is the most common cause of mental health problems — and not just at highly selective institutions

Excerpted from “The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be” by Howard Gardner and Wendy Fischman. Reprinted with permission from The MIT Press. Copyright 2022.

Together with our analysis crew, we spent 5 years visiting ten disparate campuses, finishing up over two thou­sand intensive, semi-structured interviews. On every campus we interviewed roughly fifty incoming college students and fifty grad­uating college students, and smaller numbers of school, senior adminis­trators, trustees, younger alums, dad and mom, and job recruiters. … Throughout all contributors, practically half (44%) rank psychological well being as a very powerful downside on campus — one of many few agree­ments amongst all contributors. Put one other means, every constituency group in our examine — first-year college students, graduating college students, college, directors, dad and mom, trustees, younger alums — ranks psychological well being as the largest downside on the faculty campus. This alignment — amongst college students at totally different phases, college and directors who’re on campus, in addition to trustees, younger alums, and oldsters who’re off campus — is notable; certainly, it doesn’t receive with respect to any of the greater than three dozen different questions in our interview protocol.

Educational Rigor: The Most Generally Cited Trigger

Throughout all college students in our examine, the commonest explana­tion (52% of all student-reported causes) about why psychological well being is a very powerful downside on campus is educational rigor — the “strain” of lecturers. Certainly, we additionally discover that stu­dents describe this strain as what “retains them up at evening.” However what precisely is the strain? Is it about studying diffi­cult content material? Or making ready for exams or writing papers? Or constructing a positive transcript to get a job or get into graduate college? Or (paying homage to response choices on college admissions exams) “all the above”? 

Maybe not surprisingly at this second in historical past, when stu­dents talk about educational strain as a reason for psychological well being, probably the most frequent rationalization focuses on attaining exterior measures of success-securing a excessive grade-point common, or “doing effectively” on an task or an examination (51%). For instance, a first-year stu­dent majoring in communications explains: “I do know numerous children who … get tremendous stressed over grades they usually get actually anx­ious about it … like intense folks make like, ‘It’s a must to have an excellent GPA, you must have As and stuff.’ And so, like folks get actually stressed over that.” A graduating scholar within the midst of making use of to graduate applications describes needing to carry out: “I believe, you simply need to have an excellent grade within the class as a result of it is one step ahead to your diploma, proper? It is one step ahead to being [on] the respect roll … Am I gonna graduate? Am I gonna graduate with honors? And like, you already know, like, will I get into an excellent graduate college?”

Apparently and importantly, these considerations with the exterior markers of success are the commonest descriptors for educational rigor at each campus – from most to least selective. For instance, of the three faculties with probably the most college students who touch upon exterior measures of success, two faculties are high-selectivity campuses in our pattern (67% and 60%), and the opposite college is without doubt one of the low-selectivity campuses in our pattern (63%). Alternatively, of the three faculties with the fewest college students who remark about exterior measures of success, two faculties are medium-selectivity campuses (45% and 40%) and the opposite college is without doubt one of the high-selectivity campuses in our pattern (45%). In different phrases, scholar stress with respect to educational rigor pervades each campus, no matter its selectivity. Subsequently, we won’t – and should not –presume that college students on the most selective establishments really feel extra strain than do college students at different faculties – nor that the college at these selec­tive establishments apply extra strain than college at different faculties. College students in any respect faculties report stress with respect to “doing effectively.”