Tag: Health

  • Duty of care isn’t about mental health, it’s about preventing harm

    Duty of care isn’t about mental health, it’s about preventing harm

    When people talk about a “duty of care” in higher education, the conversation almost always circles back to mental health – to counselling services, wellbeing strategies, or suicide prevention.

    It’s understandable. Those are visible, urgent needs. But the phrase “duty of care” carries far more weight than any one policy or pastoral initiative.

    It reaches into every space where universities hold power over students’ lives, and every context where harm is foreseeable and preventable.

    That misunderstanding has shaped national policy, too. When over 128,000 people petitioned Parliament for a statutory duty of care in 2023, the Government’s response was to establish the Higher Education Mental Health Implementation Taskforce – a body focused on mental health and suicide prevention.

    Its four objectives spoke volumes – boosting University Mental Health Charter sign-ups, expanding data analytics to flag students in distress, promoting “compassionate communications” to guide staff interactions with students and, where appropriate, with families, and overseeing a National Review of Higher Education Student Suicides.

    These were not bad aims – but they did not speak to the duty that had been demanded. None addressed the legal, structural, or preventative responsibilities that underpin a real duty of care.

    The Taskforce has tackled symptoms, not systems – outcomes, not obligations. By focusing on “student mental health,” the issue became more comfortable – easier to manage within existing policy frameworks and reputational boundaries.

    It allowed the sector to appear to act, while sidestepping the harder questions of legal clarity, parity, and the accountability owed to those who were harmed, failed, or lost.

    In a 2023 Wonkhe article, Sunday Blake made this point with striking clarity. “Duty of care,” she wrote, “is not just about suicide prevention.”

    Nor, by extension, is duty of care just about mental health. Universities shape students’ experiences through housing, assessment, social structures, disciplinary systems, placement arrangements, and daily communications.

    They wield influence that can support, endanger, empower or neglect. If the phrase “duty of care” is to mean anything, it must cover the full spectrum of foreseeable harm – not only the moments of crisis but the conditions that allow harm to build unseen.

    Importantly, this broader understanding of duty of care is not confined to campaigners or bereaved families. The British Medical Association has also recently called for a statutory duty of care across higher education, after hundreds of medical students reported sexual misconduct, harassment, and institutional neglect in a UK-wide survey.

    Drawing on evidence from its Medical Students Committee, the BMA argued that universities hold both knowledge and control, and therefore must bear legal responsibility for preventing foreseeable harm. Crucially, the BMA understands duty of care as a legal obligation – not a wellbeing initiative. Their intervention shows that this is not a niche debate about mental health, but a structural failure across the entire higher-education sector.

    That wider perspective is not a theoretical question. It has been tested – violently, publicly, and avoidably – in real life.

    The stabbing

    In October 2009, Katherine Rosen was a third-year pre-med student at UCLA, one of America’s leading public universities. She was attending a routine chemistry class – an ordinary academic setting – when another student, Damon Thompson, approached her from behind and stabbed her in the neck and chest with a kitchen knife. He nearly killed her.

    It was sudden. It was unprovoked. But it was not unexpected.

    Thompson had a long, documented history of paranoid delusions. University psychiatrists had diagnosed him with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. He reported hearing voices and believed classmates were plotting against him.

    He had been expelled from university housing after multiple altercations. He told staff he was thinking about hurting others. He had specifically named Katherine in a complaint – claiming she had called him “stupid” during lab work.

    Staff knew. Multiple professionals were aware of his condition – and the risks he posed. Just one day before the attack, he was discussed at a campus risk assessment meeting. And yet – no action was taken. No warning was issued, no protection was offered, and no safeguarding plan was put in place.

    Katherine was left completely unaware. Because the university chose to do nothing.

    The legal battle

    After surviving the attack, Katherine took an action that would shape the future of student safety law in the United States – she sued her university.

    Her claim was simple but profound. UCLA, she argued, had a special relationship with her as a student. That relationship – based on enrolment, proximity, institutional control, and expectation of care – created a legal duty to protect her from foreseeable harm. And that duty, she said, had been breached.

    She wasn’t demanding perfection or suggesting universities could prevent every imaginable harm. She asked a basic question – if a student has been clearly identified as a threat, and the university knows it, doesn’t it have a legal responsibility to act before someone gets seriously hurt – or killed?

    UCLA’s response? No. The university claimed it had no legal duty to protect adult students from the criminal acts of others – even when it was aware of a risk. This wasn’t their responsibility, they said. Universities weren’t guardians, and students weren’t children. No duty, no breach, no liability.

    Their argument rested on a key principle of common law, shared by both the US and UK – that legal duties of care only arise in specific, established situations. Traditionally, adult-to-adult relationships – like those between a university and its students – did not automatically create such duties. Courts are cautious – they don’t want to impose sweeping responsibilities on institutions that may be unreasonable or unmanageable. But that argument ignores a crucial reality – the power imbalance, the structure, and the unique environment of university life.

    The judgment

    Katherine’s case wound its way through the California courts for almost ten years. At every level, the same question remained – does a university owe a duty of care to its students in classroom settings, especially when it is aware of a specific risk?

    Finally, in 2018, the California Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling in her favour.

    The Court held – by a clear majority – that yes, universities do owe such a duty. Not universally, not in every context – but during curricular activities, and particularly when risks are foreseeable, they must take reasonable protective measures.

    The judgment clarified that a “special relationship” exists between universities and their students, based on the student’s dependence on the university for a “safe environment.” That relationship created not just moral expectations but legal ones.

    In the Court’s own words:

    Phrased at the appropriate level of generality, then, the question here is not whether UCLA could predict that Damon Thompson would stab Katherine Rosen in the chemistry lab. It is whether a reasonable university could foresee that its negligent failure to control a potentially violent student, or to warn students who were foreseeable targets of his ire, could result in harm to one of those students.

    That emphasis on warning mattered. The Court was clear that the duty it recognised did not demand extraordinary measures or perfect foresight. The minimum reasonable step UCLA could have taken — and failed to take — was to warn Katherine or put in place basic protective actions once staff knew she was a potential target. It was this failure at the most elementary level of safeguarding that brought the duty sharply into focus.

    And again:

    Colleges [universities] provide academic courses in exchange for a fee, but a college is far more to its students than a business. Residential colleges provide living spaces, but they are more than mere landlords. Along with educational services, colleges provide students social, athletic, and cultural opportunities. Regardless of the campus layout, colleges provide a discrete community for their students. For many students, college is the first time they have lived away from home. Although college students may no longer be minors under the law, they may still be learning how to navigate the world as adults. They are dependent on their college communities to provide structure, guidance, and a safe learning environment.

    This ruling was a seismic moment. It wasn’t just about Katherine – it was about thousands of other students, across hundreds of other classrooms, who could now expect, not merely hope, that their university would act when danger loomed.

    The precedent was narrow but profound

    This victory came at a cost. It took nearly a decade of litigation, immense emotional strength, and personal resilience. And even in success, the ruling was carefully limited in scope:

    … that universities owe a duty to protect students from foreseeable violence during curricular activities.

    The duty applied only to harm that was:

    • Foreseeable,
    • Tied to curricular activities, and
    • Within the university’s ability to prevent.

    It did not impose a sweeping obligation on universities to protect students in all circumstances – nor should it. But it decisively rejected the idea that universities have no duty to protect.

    This distinction – between the impossible and the reasonable – is crucial. The court did not ask universities to do the impossible. It simply expected them to act reasonably when aware of a real and specific risk to student safety. That principle sets a clear floor, not an unreachable ceiling, for institutional responsibility.

    It also highlights a broader truth – duty of care in higher education is not a binary. It is not all or nothing. A range of duties may arise depending on the setting – academic, residential, or social – or the nature of the risk. The more control a university exercises, and the more vulnerable the student, the greater the duty it may owe.

    This is not about creating impossible expectations – it is about recognising that responsibility must follow power.

    That same logic – and the emerging recognition of limited but enforceable duties – has begun to surface in UK courts. In Feder and McCamish v The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, a County Court held that higher education institutions have a duty of care to carry out reasonable investigations when they receive allegations of sexual assault:

    …by taking reasonable protective, supportive, investigatory and, when appropriate, disciplinary steps and in associated communications.

    Again, where institutions have knowledge and control, the law expects a proportionate response.

    But it is important to recognise just how narrow the duty was in Feder & McCamish. The College already had safeguarding procedures in place, and liability arose only because it failed to follow the process it had voluntarily adopted when students reported serious sexual assault.

    The court did not recognise any general duty to protect student welfare – it simply enforced the College’s own promises. It illustrates the limits of UK law – duties arise only in piecemeal, procedural ways, leaving large gaps in protection whenever an institution has not explicitly committed itself to a particular process, or chooses not to follow it.

    Why this story matters now

    The Rosen judgment exposes a truth that too many still miss. Duty of care in higher education is not about expanding counselling teams or implementing wellbeing charters. It’s about the structure of responsibility itself – who knows what, who can act, and who must act when risk is foreseeable.

    In Katherine Rosen’s case, mental health support for Damon Thompson already existed. What failed was the system around him – communication, coordination, and the willingness to protect others. The danger was known, the mechanisms to prevent it were available, and the decision to use them was not taken.

    That is why framing “duty of care” as a question of mental health provision misses the point. Whether the risk is psychological, physical, financial, or reputational, the same principle applies – when institutions hold both knowledge and control, they owe a duty to act with care.

    From assaults in halls to exploitation on placements, from harassment ignored to risks left unmonitored, the duty of care spans far more than mental health. It is about foreseeable harm in any form. It is about accountability that matches authority. It is about creating a culture in which doing nothing or ignoring what you know is no longer an option.

    As Parliament prepares to debate the issue once again, the Rosen case stands as a reminder that this conversation cannot stop at wellbeing. The question is not whether universities should care about students’ mental health – of course they should. The question is whether they will take responsibility for the predictable consequences of their own systems, structures, and decisions.

    Katherine Rosen’s survival – and her long legal struggle – gave the world a clearer definition of that responsibility. It showed that duty of care is not about offering sympathy after the fact, but about preventing foreseeable harm before it happens. That is the real meaning of duty of care in higher education – and it is the clarity the UK still urgently lacks.

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  • [Podcast] Healthy Minds, Bright Futures: How to Navigate Mental Health & Build Support

    [Podcast] Healthy Minds, Bright Futures: How to Navigate Mental Health & Build Support

    Children’s mental health is in the spotlight like never before. Concerning data around anxiety and depression, as well as the increasing prevalence of conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder, are driving important discussions about supporting kids’ mental health.

    In this three-part series, our expert guests address evidence-based interventions and assessments to equip clinicians with the latest tools and tactics for enhancing a child or adolescent’s well-being. We’ll assess the current landscape of student mental health and dive deeper into ADHD, ASD and co-occurring conditions, and the latest BASCTM family of solutions.

    Check out the podcast episodes!


    ⬆




    1. Ep. 1
      Getting Your Attention: What You Can Do To Support Children and Teens with ADHD



    Ep. 1

    Getting Your Attention: What You Can Do To Support Children and Teens with ADHD

    ADHD diagnosis rates vary widely, and the condition itself presents many complexities. We’ll explore actionable strategies for clinicians to identify children who need additional ADHD support and how to provide the right learning environment for them, with our guest: Tyler Vassar, Ed.S., a licensed school psychologist and assessment consultant at Pearson.







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  • Education Department ordered to reinstate mental health grants

    Education Department ordered to reinstate mental health grants

    Dive Brief:

    • The U.S. Department of Education must reinstate, for now, canceled federal grants for student mental health services due to “numerous irreparable harms flowing from the discontinuation decisions,” according to an Oct. 27 order by a federal judge.
    • Sixteen states sued the Education Department in late June after the Trump administration in April canceled the multi-year congressionally approved funding for the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program and the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant. The order only applies to about 50 colleges, school districts and nonprofit entities who received the grants in the plaintiff states.
    • In the order, the judge said grant discontinuations were likely “arbitrary and capricious” because they were not renewed based on individual reasons, but rather were discontinued with a generic message saying that the grants “were not in the best interests of the federal government.”

    Dive Insight:

    On Tuesday, an Education Department spokesperson said the agency stands by its grant decisions and will appeal the order. 

    The Education Department announced in September that their new $270 million grant competition is accepting applications to use the federal funds from the two programs that were canceled in April. The department issued new priorities prohibiting the mental health grant money to be used for “promoting or endorsing gender ideology, political activism, racial stereotyping, or hostile environments for students of particular races.”

    The Education Department spokesperson, in a Tuesday email, said, “Our new competition is strengthening the mental health grant programs in contrast to the Biden Administration’s approach that used these programs to promote divisive ideologies based on race and sex.” 

    Some education organizations said they were concerned that the new competition focuses only on school psychologists and does not include school counselors and social workers who also provide student mental health supports.

    The canceled grants, which were set to expire on Dec. 31, were focused on increasing the pipeline of credentialed school-based mental health professionals working in rural and underserved areas and providing direct services to students in high-needs schools, according to court documents. Court records said that the Education Department valued the canceled grants at about $1 billion. 

    Addressing the discontinuation of the grants, Judge Kymberly Evanson in the U.S. District Court Western District of Washington said in the order that there was no evidence the Education Department “considered any relevant data pertaining to the Grants at issue,” leaving it difficult to determine “whether the Department’s decision bears a rational connection to the facts.”

    Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, director of policy and advocacy for the National Association of School Psychologists, called the ruling “a win for children, families, and educators across the country.” 

    Vaillancourt Strobach said in an email Tuesday that the grants “have proven essential in addressing nationwide shortages of school psychologists and other school mental health professionals.”

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  • College Student Mental Health Remains a Wicked Problem

    College Student Mental Health Remains a Wicked Problem

    Just 27 percent of undergraduates describe their mental health as above average or excellent, according to new data from Inside Higher Ed’s main annual Student Voice survey of more than 5,000 undergraduates at two- and four-year institutions.

    Another 44 percent of students rate their mental health as average on a five-point scale. The remainder, 29 percent, rate it as below average or poor. 

    In last year’s main Student Voice survey, 42 percent of respondents rated their mental health as good or excellent, suggesting a year-over-year decline in students feeling positive about their mental health. This doesn’t translate to more students rating their mental health negatively this year, however, as this share stayed about the same. Rather, more students in this year’s sample rate their mental health as average (2025’s 44 percent versus 29 percent in 2024). 

    About the Survey

    Student Voice is an ongoing survey and reporting series that seeks to elevate the student perspective in institutional student success efforts and in broader conversations about college.

    Look out for future reporting on the main annual survey of our 2025–26 cycle, Student Voice: Amplified. Check out what students have already said about trust, artificial intelligence and academics, cost of attendance, and campus climate.

    Some 5,065 students from 260 two- and four-year institutions, public and private nonprofit, responded to this main annual survey about student success, conducted in August. Explore the data captured by our survey partner Generation Lab here and here. The margin of error is plus or minus one percentage point.

    The story is similar regarding ratings of overall well-being. In 2024, 52 percent of students described their overall well-being as good or excellent. This year, 33 percent say it’s above average or excellent. Yet because last year’s survey included slightly different categories (excellent, good, average, fair and poor, instead of excellent, above average, average, below average and poor), it’s impossible to make direct comparisons. 

    How does this relate to other national data? The 2024-2025 Healthy Minds Study found that students self-reported lower rates of moderate to severe depressive symptoms, anxiety and more for the third year in a row—what one co-investigator described as “a promising counter-narrative to what seems like constant headlines around young people’s struggles with mental health.” However, the same study found that students’ sense of “flourishing,” including self-esteem, purpose and optimism, declined slightly from the previous year. So while fewer students may be experiencing serious mental health problems, others may be moving toward the middle from a space of thriving.

    Inside Higher Ed’s leadership surveys this year—including the forthcoming Survey of College and University Student Success Administrators—also documented a gap between how well leaders think their institutions have responded to what’s been called the student mental health crisis and whether they think undergraduate mental health is actually improving. In Inside Higher Ed’s annual survey of provosts with Hanover Research, for example, 69 percent said their institution has been effective in responding to student mental health concerns, but only 40 percent said undergraduate health on their campus is on the upswing.

    Provosts also ranked mental health as the No. 1 campus threat to student safety and well-being (80 percent said it’s a top risk), followed by personal stress (66 percent), academic stress (51 percent) and food and housing insecurity (42 percent). Those were all far ahead of risks such as physical security threats (2 percent) or alcohol and substance use issues (13 percent).

    Among community college provosts, in particular, food and housing insecurity was the leading concern, with 86 percent naming it a top risk.

    Financial insecurity can impact mental health, and both factors can affect academic success. Among 2025 Student Voice respondents who have ever seriously considered stopping out of college (n=1,204), for instance, 43 percent describe their mental health as below average or poor. Among those who have never considered stopping out (n=3,304), the rate is just 23 percent. And among the smaller group of students who have stopped out for a semester or more but re-enrolled (n=557), 40 percent say their mental health is below average or poor, underscoring that returnees remain an at-risk group for completion.

    Similarly, 43 percent of students who have seriously considered stopping out rate their financial well-being as below average or poor, versus 23 percent among students who’ve never considered stopping out—the same split as the previous finding on mental health.

    The association between students’ confidence in their financial literacy and their risk of dropping out is weaker, supporting the case for tangible basic needs support: Some 25 percent of respondents who have considered stopping out rate their financial literacy as below average or poor, compared to 15 percent of those who have not considered stopping out.

    Angela K. Johnson, vice president for enrollment management at Cuyahoga Community College in Ohio, said her institution continuously seeks feedback from students about how their financial stability and other aspects of well-being intersect.

    “What students are saying by ‘financial’ is very specific around being unhoused, food insecurity,” she said. “And part of the mental health piece is also not having the medical insurance support to cover some of those ongoing services. We do offer some of them in our counseling and psychological services department, but we only offer so many.”

    All this bears on enrollment and persistence, Johnson said, “but it really is a student psychological safety problem, a question of how they’re trying to manage their psychological safety without their basic needs being met.”

    A ‘Top-of-Mind Issue’

    Tri-C, as Johnson’s college is called, takes a multipronged approach to student wellness, including via an app called Help Is Here, resource awareness efforts that target even dual-enrollment students and comprehensive basic needs support: Think food pantries situated near dining services, housing transition coordination, childcare referrals, utility assistance, emergency funds and more.

    Faculty training is another focus. “Sometimes you see a student sleeping in your class, but it’s not because the class is boring. They may have been sleeping in their car last night,” Johnson said. “They may not have had a good meal today.”

    Political uncertainty may also be impacting student wellness. The American Council on Education hosted a webinar earlier this year addressing what leaders should be thinking about with respect to “these uncertain times around student well-being,” said Hollie Chessman, a director and principal program officer at ACE. “We talked about identity, different identity-based groups and how the safe spaces and places are not as prevalent on campuses anymore, based on current legislation. So some of that is going to be impacting the mental health and well-being of our students with traditionally underrepresented backgrounds.”

    Previously released results from this year’s Student Voice survey indicate that most students, 73 percent, still believe that most or nearly all of their peers feel welcomed, valued and supported on campus. That’s up slightly from last year’s 67 percent. But 32 percent of students in 2025 report that recent federal actions to limit diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have negatively impacted their experience at college. This increases to 37 percent among Asian American and Pacific Islander and Hispanic students, 40 percent among Black students and 41 percent among students of other races. It decreases among white students, to 26 percent. Some 65 percent of nonbinary students (n=209) report negative impacts. For international students (n=203), the rate is 34 percent.

    The Student Voice survey doesn’t reveal any key differences among students’ self-ratings of mental health by race. Regarding gender, 63 percent of nonbinary students report below average or poor mental health, more than double the overall rate of 29 percent. In last year’s survey, 59 percent of nonbinary students reported fair or poor mental health.

    In a recent ACE pulse survey of senior campus leaders, two in three reported moderate or extreme concern about student mental health and well-being. (Other top concerns were the value of college, long-term financial viability and generative artificial intelligence.)

    “This is a top-of-mind issue, and it has been a top-of-mind issue for college and university presidents” since even before the pandemic, Chessman said. “And student health and well-being is a systemic issue, right? It’s not just addressed by a singular program or a counseling session. It’s a systemic issue that permeates.”

    In Inside Higher Ed’s provosts’ survey, the top actions these leaders reported taking to promote mental health on their campus in the last year are: emphasizing the importance of social connection and/or creating new opportunities for campus involvement (76 percent) and investing in wellness facilities and/or services to promote overall well-being (59 percent).

    Despite the complexity of the issue, Chessman said, many campuses are making strides in supporting student well-being—including by identifying students who aren’t thriving “and then working in interventions to help those students.” Gatekeeper training, or baseline training for faculty and staff to recognize signs of student distress, is another strategy, as is making sure faculty and staff members can connect students to support resources, groups and peers.

    “One of the big things that we have to emphasize is that it is a campuswide issue,” Chessman reiterated.

    More on Health and Wellness

    Other findings on student health and wellness from this newest round of Student Voice results show:

    1. Mental health is just one area of wellness in which many students are struggling.

    Asked to rate various dimensions of their health and wellness at college, students are most likely to rate their academic fit as above average or excellent, at 38 percent. Sense of social belonging (among other areas) is weaker, with 27 percent of students rating theirs above average or excellent. One clear opportunity area for colleges: promoting healthy sleep habits, since 44 percent of students describe their own as below average or poor. (Another recent study linked poor sleep among students to loneliness.)

    1. Many students report using unhealthy strategies to cope with stress, and students at risk of stopping out may be most vulnerable.

    As for how students deal with stress at college, 56 percent report a mix of healthy strategies (such as exercising, talking to family and friends, and prioritizing sleep) and unhealthy ones (such as substance use, avoidance of responsibilities and social withdrawal). But students who have seriously considered stopping out, and those who have stopped out but re-enrolled, are less likely than those who haven’t considered leaving college to rely on mostly healthy and effective strategies.

    1. Most students approve of their institution’s efforts to make key student services available and accessible.

    Despite the persistent wellness challenge, most students rate as good or excellent their institution’s efforts to make health, financial aid, student life and other services accessible and convenient. In good news for community colleges’ efforts, two-year students are a bit more likely than their four-year peers to rate these efforts as good or excellent, at 68 percent versus 62 percent.

    ‘It’s Easy to Feel Isolated’

    The Jed Foundation, which promotes emotional health and suicide prevention among teens and young adults, advocates a comprehensive approach to well-being based on seven domains:

    • Foster life skills
    • Promote connectedness and positive culture
    • Recognize and respond to distress
    • Reduce barriers to help-seeking
    • Ensure access to effective mental health care
    • Establish systems of crisis management
    • Reduce access to lethal means

    At JED’s annual policy summit in Washington, D.C., this month, advocates focused on sustaining the progress that has been made on mental health, as well as on the growing influence of artificial intelligence and the role of local, state and federal legislation on mental health in the digital age. Rohan Satija, a 17-year-old first-year student at the University of Texas at Austin who spoke at the event, told Inside Higher Ed in an interview that his mental health journey began in elementary school, when his family emigrated from New Zealand to Texas.

    “Just being in a completely new environment and being surrounded by a completely new group of people, I struggled with my mental health, and because of bullying and isolation at school, I struggled with anxiety and panic attacks,” he said.

    Satija found comfort in books and storytelling filled with “characters whom I could relate to. I read about them winning in their stories, and it showed me that I could win in my own story.”

    Satija eventually realized these stories were teaching lessons about resilience, courage and empathy—lessons he put into action when he founded a nonprofit to address book deserts in low-income and otherwise marginalized communities in Texas. Later, he founded the Vibrant Voices Project for incarcerated youth, “helping them convert their mental health struggles into powerful monologues they can perform for each other.”

    Currently a youth advocacy coalition fellow at JED, Satija said that college so far presents a challenge to student mental health in its “constant pressure to perform in all facets, including academically and socially and personally. I’ve seen many of my peers that have entered college with me, and a lot of us expect freedom and growth but get quickly bogged down with how overwhelming it can be to balance coursework, jobs, living away from your family and still achieving.”

    Students speak on a panel and the annual JED policy summit.

    Rohan Satija, center, speaks at JED’s annual policy summit in Washington earlier this month.

    He added, “This competitive environment can make small setbacks feel like failures, and I’d say perfectionism can often become kind of like a silent standard.”

    Another major challenge? Loneliness and disconnection. “Even though campuses are full of people, it’s easy to feel isolated, especially as a new student, and even further, especially as a first-generation student, an immigrant or anyone far from home.”

    While many students are of course excited for the transition to adulthood and “finally being free for the first time,” he explained, “it comes with a lot of invisible losses, including losing the comfort of your family and a stable routine … So I think without intentional efforts to build connection in your new college campus, a lot of students feel that their sense of belonging can erode pretty quickly.”

    In this light, Satija praised UT Austin’s club culture, noting that some of the extracurricular groups he’s joined assign a “big,” or student mentor, to each new student, or “little,” driving connection and institutional knowledge-sharing. Faculty members are also good at sharing information about mental health resources, he said, including through the learning management system.

    And in terms of proactive approaches to overall wellness, the campus’s Longhorn Wellness Center is effective in that it “doesn’t promote itself as this big, like, crisis response space: ‘Oh, we’re here to improve your mental health. We’re here to make your best self,’ or anything like that,” he said. “It literally just promotes itself as a chill space for student wellness. They’re always talking about their massage chairs.”

    “That gets students in the door, yeah?” Satija said.

    This independent editorial project is produced with the Generation Lab and supported by the Gates Foundation.

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  • Mental health university | Warwick Careers Blog

    Mental health university | Warwick Careers Blog

    If you have experienced any of the symptoms commonly associated with mental health issues, you are certainly not alone. 1 in 4 of us may experience this during our lifetime and it can be particularly acute for students, living independently for the first time without the emotional support of family and friends. 

    What is mental health?

    The World Health Organisation describe mental health as a ‘state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.’ For many of us, daily life is a struggle and for many students there is what probably feels like incredible pressure to succeed, defined by your degree classification and ultimately the status of your career. You do not have to accept that disrupted sleep, anxiety, periods of depression and stress are the price you must reluctantly pay to survive at university. There is advice and support available to help you address these issues. 

    Well-being is becoming increasingly important 

    Employers and the world of business have recognised how important well-being is in terms of developing and maintaining the health, job satisfaction and productivity of their staff. Employers across a variety of industries, both public and private now offer ’employee assistance programmes’ that offer confidential support services. If you are concerned how a period of depression for example, may impact on future job applications you may be pleasantly surprised how understanding and sensitive an employer may be. It is your decision whether or not to tell an employer you have experienced a mental health issue

    Empathy and understanding

    Society’s reluctance to recognise or even discuss mental health is changing. There is an increasing acceptance that mental health issues should be treated with the same sympathy and understanding as a physical illness. Admitting that you have a problem that you may not be able to resolve on your own may feel extremely uncomfortable and challenging. But this should not be seen as a weakness or that you have failed in some way. All of us are susceptible to mental health issues and talking is an important first step to helping you move forward. It may be that speaking to a friend or family member initially may help to provide a different perspective and help you to understand what you are experiencing.

    Recognising the signs

    How do you know if you are experiencing mental health issues? It is an extremely complex condition and generalisations are unhelpful. But there may be an indication of an underlying issue if you are, for example, suffering from:

    • Disturbed sleep patterns
    • Anxiety to the extent that it prevents you functioning as you normally would
    • Rapid weight gain or loss
    • Feeling low, demotivated and sad for a prolonged period of time

    What should you do?

    Talk to someone. At The University of Warwick there are a variety of counselling and psychotherapy services available, including a drop-in service . Where appropriate they may make referrals where a medical diagnosis or counselling, for example may be relevant. You could speak also your GP

    How counselling could help

    Counselling can help you to adopt a different perspective, to re-frame your thinking and perhaps challenge that negative inner voice that can be so damaging. There are a variety of approaches, all of which will develop a non-judgemental relationship between counsellor and client, founded on trust and empathy.

    As difficult as it may feel to talk about or even acknowledge the feelings you are experiencing, remember that mental health issues are extremely common. They can affect any of us at any point in our lives so however challenging it feels, take that first step to seek help. You could start to feel so much better.

    Originally written by Ray Ryan, published by Student Opportunity in October 2025

     

     

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  • Supporting the Supporters: Promoting Educators’ Mental Health – Faculty Focus

    Supporting the Supporters: Promoting Educators’ Mental Health – Faculty Focus

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  • Supporting the Supporters: Promoting Educators’ Mental Health – Faculty Focus

    Supporting the Supporters: Promoting Educators’ Mental Health – Faculty Focus

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  • “New Collaborations Needed” as U.S. Cuts Global Health Funds

    “New Collaborations Needed” as U.S. Cuts Global Health Funds

    Universities focused on global health will have to collaborate more with each other and with industry and philanthropic organizations in the face of the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar aid cuts, according to academic leaders from around the world.

    Funding covering projects tackling conditions such as AIDS, tuberculosis and Ebola has been upended since Donald Trump returned to power in January, and speakers at Times Higher Education’s World Academic Summit said that it would be impossible to replace the lost dollars overnight.

    Mosa Moshabela, vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town, said that his institution had been one of the largest recipients of National Institutes of Health funding outside the U.S., supporting projects in areas such as HIV and tuberculosis prevention, and that his institution had been “impacted a lot” by the White House’s decisions.

    “We realize the danger of having placed all our eggs in one basket, pretty much,” said Moshabela, himself a leading public health researcher.

    “We know that, in terms of scale of funding, we’re not necessarily going to have one source that can replace the amount [we received] from the NIH, but by spreading our partnerships we can still achieve similar results—and we are strengthening our partnerships in the Middle East, in Asia, across the globe, and also looking at new donors that are coming through.”

    Moshabela said that Cape Town was also putting pressure on the South African government to increase research spending, highlighting that it currently spent only 0.6 percent of gross domestic product in this area, despite a long-standing target for the outlay to reach a minimum of 1.5 percent.

    “Even between universities, we are adopting the principle of cooperation over competition,” Moshabela continued.

    “For a long time, we were competing for the same sources of funding, but now what we’re trying to do as a strategy is to cooperate more rather than compete over sources of funding.”

    Vivek Goel, vice chancellor of Canada’s University of Waterloo, agreed that it would take time to fill the funding gap left by U.S. cuts.

    “I don’t think it’s realistic to expect that overnight we are going to fill those gaps,” he said. “I think we became very reliant on a certain model … I think in collaboration between governments, philanthropy, industry and our institutions we can come up with new ways of working that can replace that work [on global health, but] not necessarily all of that funding.”

    Goel, another public health researcher, highlighted that it was not just U.S. funding that was being lost, pointing to research that was funded by Canadian sources or philanthropic organizations but that depended on clinics or infrastructure operated by the United States Agency for International Development. Researchers may also lose access to Centers for Disease Control data, he warned.

    Drawing down funding for global health research in the future will require a change of mindset, Moshabela argued, such as focusing on solutions with wider commercial benefit to attract the support of pharmaceutical companies and working to develop broader ecosystems and not just clinical interventions to win funding from philanthropists.

    Deborah McNamara, president of RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, said that Western universities should approach the funding challenges “with humility.”

    “Our partners in the Global South have been doing more with less for a very, very long time,” she noted.

    “I think we’ve all observed over time waste in development funding, and in the surgical arena certainly we often discover [that] at hospitals that we work with they have large amounts of donated equipment that perhaps can’t be maintained, can’t be run, [and] isn’t operational.

    “By listening more we can reduce the waste that happens and direct [funding] more effectively.”

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  • Week In Review: Mental health grants return and FCC rolls back E-rate expansion

    Week In Review: Mental health grants return and FCC rolls back E-rate expansion

    We’re rounding up last week’s news, from the government shutdown’s impact on schools to differentiated teacher compensation.

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  • The Unsustainable Nature of University-Related Health Care

    The Unsustainable Nature of University-Related Health Care

    University-related health care has become a sprawling and increasingly unsustainable enterprise. What began as a mission to train doctors, nurses, and medical researchers in service of the public good has morphed into a vast, profit-driven complex. Tied to the branding of universities, the financial imperatives of Big Medicine, and the precarious economics of higher education, this “Medugrift” reflects many of the same dysfunctions we see across American higher ed.

    The University as Health Care Conglomerate
    Major research universities often operate sprawling medical centers that rival Fortune 500 corporations in both revenue and expenses. Academic health systems like those at Johns Hopkins, Duke, Michigan, or USC bring in billions annually. Yet despite this scale, their finances are increasingly fragile. They rely heavily on a combination of government reimbursements, philanthropy, and sky-high tuition from medical students—many of whom graduate with debt loads exceeding $200,000.

    For universities, medical schools and hospitals serve as prestige engines and revenue streams, but they also drain resources, saddle institutions with debt, and expose them to scandals involving fraud, patient neglect, or mismanagement.

    The Student and Worker Burden
    The workforce supporting university health systems—residents, nurses, adjunct faculty, contract staff—often face long hours, low pay relative to the work demanded, and little job security. Meanwhile, students in health care disciplines are treated less as apprentices of the healing profession and more as revenue sources for both the university and affiliated corporations.

    Many young doctors-in-training are funneled into a system where their debt and exhaustion make them more compliant with the corporatization of medicine. Universities profit from this cycle, while students and patients carry the costs.

    Ballooning Costs and Broken Promises
    Despite claims of providing cutting-edge care and serving communities, university health systems often contribute to the nation’s crisis of affordability. Hospital charges at university facilities are often higher than at non-teaching hospitals, reflecting not only the real costs of research and training but also the administrative bloat, marketing budgets, and executive compensation packages that mirror the rest of higher ed.

    Patients face sticker shock, insurers pass costs to the public, and communities are left to wonder whether these “nonprofit” institutions are truly accountable.

    Medugrift and the Future
    The term Medugrift captures the contradictions: universities use the prestige of medical schools and hospitals to attract funding and political clout, but the system feeds on debt, underpaid labor, and inflated costs. It is not financially or ethically sustainable.

    As university debt rises and student loan defaults grow, the Medugrift may become a central fault line in the higher education crisis. Already, some universities have been forced to sell or spin off their hospitals. Others double down, betting on health care revenue streams to subsidize declining undergraduate enrollments.

    But this path cannot hold indefinitely. Like the broader higher education bubble, the university health care complex rests on fragile assumptions: endless student demand, limitless patient reimbursements, and unquestioned public trust. If those foundations crack, the consequences for both higher education and health care will be profound.

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