Tag: Health

Half of college students say their mental health is ‘fair’ to ‘terrible,’ survey finds

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Half of college students rate their mental health as fair, poor, or terrible, according to a recent survey from The Steve Fund, a nonprofit that focused on the mental health of young people of color.

The survey also found about 40% of students were “very or extremely stressed about maintaining their mental health” while in college. About 1 in 5 students said the same about connecting with other students and finding their niche in college.

Moreover, about one-third or more of students experienced a range of challenges such as changes in sleeping habits and difficulty concentrating and learning.

Students struggling with mental health in college isn’t a new phenomena, but “the severity and pervasiveness have clearly worsened,” Annelle Primm, The Steve Fund’s senior medical director, said in an email.

“We’re not just seeing higher levels of stress — we’re seeing a rising sense of disconnection,” said Primm. “The need for campuses to respond thoughtfully and urgently is more pressing than ever.”

The mental health issues students face may also impact their graduation trajectory. About half of students considered reducing their classload, 40% considered transferring, and 30% considered dropping out of college altogether due to “negative experiences on campus,” the report stated.

Steve Fund researchers surveyed about 2,050 college students between ages 18 and 24 who were attending four-year institutions and largely taking in-person classes.The survey was conducted last year between February and April.

There isn’t a single cause behind the mental health challenges that students are facing, but “several powerful stressors are converging,” said Primm. That includes discrimination on campus, encounters with campus security or a lack of belonging, according to the report.

Many college students also grew into adulthood during the COVID-19 pandemic, a uniquely disruptive period that had significant impacts on emotional development and social connection, Primm said. Some of those students struggled with isolation caused by remote learning, while others had limited opportunities to meaningfully interact with their peers during their formative years, she said.

“Layered on top of this are longstanding financial pressures like student loan debt, and broader societal stressors — from political divisiveness to global conflict,” said Primm.

Racial differences

Negative experiences on campus — which were more prevalent among students of color — impacted mental health, the report found.

About half of Black and Indigenous students reported having a negative experience with cyberbullying on campus, the highest of any racial groups, the report stated. And a higher percentage of students of color reported threats of physical violence on campus and being stopped by campus police and security than their White peers.

About 60% of Black and Asian students and nearly half of Hispanic students reported negative racial comments on campus, and similar shares said the same about facing different forms of discrimination, the report stated. That’s higher than the 43% of White students who experienced discrimination and 29% who experienced racial comments.

Among all students, two-thirds pointed to other students as their source of their negative experiences on campus, while 20% identified faculty, the report stated.

More than 4 in 5 students also said their institution “helps students from various racial and ethnic backgrounds feel welcome.”

But Black, Hispanic, and Asian students reported their campus climate as inclusive at lower rates than White students. And about half of Black and Indigenous students said they experienced difficulty being themselves in college.

Encouraging progress

Colleges may be making strides in providing better mental health resources to students, the survey suggested.

Student access to and awareness of college mental health services improved significantly since 2017, when the Steve Fund last surveyed college students about their mental health. That survey drew responses from 1,056 college students between ages 17 and 27 attending both two- and four-year colleges.

Primm said the two surveys can be considered comparable, as the majority of students who completed the 2017 survey were also attending four-year colleges.

More than 90% of students were aware of campus resources in 2024, compared to about three-quarters of students in 2017. Likewise, students in 2024 were more willing to discuss their personal issues or acknowledge their mental health issues than students seven years prior, the report stated.

Most respondents also believed their institutions were taking the negative experiences they faced on campus seriously. More than 65% of students indicated their institutions promptly addressed incidents of discrimination or bias, and more than 70% stated they “felt respected, supported and valued” by faculty and administrators, the report stated.

Still, a “sizable portion of students of color” did not feel respected, supported and valued on campus, and more than half of respondents believed their colleges took “a one size fits all approach to engaging its students,” the report added.

Students in 2024 expressed greater interest in support groups and expanded counseling services, safe and green spaces on campus, urgent crisis services and on-call mental health support, and programs that teach students about mental health, said Primm.

“It’s about building environments where all students feel safe, valued, and supported,” said Primm.

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August 26, 2025
Transforming Classroom Discussions with Communication Practices from Health Coaching – Faculty Focus
Classroom discussions are among the most enriching aspects of higher education, offering students opportunities to engage with peers, deepen their understanding of course material, and draw meaningful connections between concepts. For instructors, these discussions serve as a powerful tool to foster collaboration, assess comprehension, and create a more dynamic and inclusive learning environment. Yet, leading effective discussions can be challenging, especially when students are hesitant to participate or when conversations lack depth and substance.

The field of health coaching—where communication is central to guiding clients toward greater self-awareness and behavior change—offers a valuable framework for enhancing classroom dialogue. Health coaching is a collaborative process that relies on intentional and empathetic communication to help clients explore their motivations, clarify their goals, and take ownership of their progress. By applying key communication strategies from this field, educators can elevate the quality of classroom discussions and create more meaningful interactions with students. This article explores how three core techniques from health coaching — the OARS framework (open-ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and summarization), rephrasing, and active listening — can be adapted to the classroom to facilitate deeper, more personally relevant conversations.

The OARS Framework

First and foremost, good discussions begin with good questions. Consider the principles contained in the acronym “OARS” to shape the way you formulate questions and listen to responses, facilitating more interactive and less directive discussions.

O: Open-ended questions: Ask questions that require more than discrete responses. Avoid questions that can be answered with “yes,” “no,” or a number. Instead of asking “Are people motivated solely by monetary incentives?”, consider asking: “Tell us about your sources of motivation,” “Why might people not be motivated when provided an incentive?” and “What, in your experience, have you seen motivate your peers to…?” When used effectively, open-ended questions encourage students to think more deeply and progress in their understanding. They can even prompt students to introduce classroom topics without the instructor ever having to explicitly steer the discussion in a particular direction.

A: Affirmations: Don’t hesitate to provide positive statements that acknowledge a student’s contribution. Affirmations foster respect and support an inclusive teaching climate; however, the affirmations must be genuine and authentic. Students notice when the instructor simply says “Great comment” or “Good question” to a majority of students’ responses. Remember, this isn’t an interrogation but a dialogue. Consider the potential impact of statements like: “Sara, thanks for volunteering to share your thoughts about applications of aerobic energy production in exercise programming,” or “Javier, I really appreciate how your comments reflect Van Gogh’s perspective on his use of sunflowers in his paintings.”

RS: Reflective Listening and Summarization: Reflective listening occurs when the instructor reflects back to the student the core elements of their contribution to the discussion. Reflective listening provides an excellent opportunity for the instructor to confirm their understanding of the student’s comments, as well as directing the conversation forward. In this step in the OARS framework, it may be appropriate to ask either a yes/no or an open-ended question. For example, “John, you’re saying personal accomplishment can be a powerful motivator among mountain athletes, is that right?” or “It seems like something is missing in our understanding of what happens when we introduce financial incentive to these groups. What do you think would happen if…?” When applied to the discussion as a whole, a summary of the main points made from the instructor’s perspective can be a great way to remind students of key points, reinforce the instructor’s informal assessment of student learning, as well as introduce the next topic or item in the lesson plan of the day.

Application Moment: Consider how you might have applied these principles of the OARS framework to a recent group discussion you led in class.

While the OARS framework provides an excellent guideline for how an instructor can improve the overall quality discussions, the following two techniques will provide concrete recommendations on what to say and how to act during the discussion.

Rephrasing

Remember the importance of good questions for good discussions? To take things one step further, consider the technique of rephrasing. To encourage deeper topic exploration, consider restructuring questions by replacing the intended question word (e.g., “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” or “how”) with a different one. For example, an instructor may want to ask, “How can we increase motivation?” and might rephrase that question as, “What factors increase motivation?” or “Where do you feel the most/least motivated?” or “Who demonstrates the most/least motivation?” or “Why does motivation ebb and flow?” or “When are you most/least motivated?” By changing the question word, the instructor can steer the discussion to change how students think about the question, perhaps eliciting a list of possible outcomes (e.g. “What are the factors?”) or explore possible mechanisms/antecedents (e.g., “Why might motivation decline in competitive settings?”) or to help the students develop their ability to embody or conceptualize new perspectives (e.g. “How do financial incentives impact different groups or individuals? John, you represent a group of…”). This can provide depth to the conversation, encourage creativity and application of concepts in discussion, and allows for the exploration of a variety of interesting tangents.

Application Moment: Write down a discussion question from your last class instruction. Rephrase the question using each of the common question words (“who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, “why”, “how”). Consider the types of responses each question word will elicit.

Active Listening

Last, but not least, active listening: Often, instructors forget that when a question is asked, a response is on the way. It can be surprisingly difficult to fully engage with student responses, as it requires the instructor to focus on what the student is saying rather than on what they will say next. The instructor’s first job is to focus on what students are saying rather than their (the instructor’s) response. The following strategies promote active listening in the classroom during discussions:
- Provide adequate time for student responses.
- Don’t be afraid of silence. Silence provides you and your students time to think.
- Call on students by their first name when you engage with them.
- Get out from behind your lectern and casually move toward the student who is speaking.
- Nod and use affirmations (e.g., nodding or stating “nice insight, Paul”).
- Paraphrase when appropriate (“What I hear you saying, Paul, is that….”) – see “rephrasing/summarization” under the OARS framework.
Fostering meaningful classroom discussions is both an art and a skill—one that can be significantly enhanced by drawing on the principles of communication in health coaching. By integrating techniques such as the OARS framework, rephrasing, and active listening, instructors can create more engaging, inclusive, and thought-provoking learning environments. These strategies not only encourage deeper student participation but also help build a classroom culture rooted in empathy, curiosity, and mutual respect. As higher education continues to evolve, integrating communication practices from other disciplines can be a powerful means of enriching the educational experience and enhancing student learning.

Maria Newton, PhD, F-AASP, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Utah. She holds a BA from the University of California, Davis, an MS from California State University, Chico, and a PhD from Purdue University, with specialized training in sport and exercise motivation. Dr. Newton’s research focuses on achievement motivation, specifically how perceptions of the climate influence motivational striving. Her most recent contributions to the literature have focused on how creating a caring and task-involving climate fosters motivation. With over 30 years of experience in higher education, Dr. Newton brings extensive expertise in teaching a variety of courses in diverse formats. Recognized with numerous teaching awards, she is deeply committed to cultivating an inclusive and intellectually stimulating climate that inspires learning and personal growth.

Jefferson Brewer, MS, CSCS, ACSM EP, is an Associate Instructor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Utah. He holds a BS in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Exercise Science and an MS in Kinesiology focused on Health and Wellness Coaching, both from the University of Utah. He is currently completing his dissertation for a PhD in Integrated Health Science at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions. Jefferson’s research centers on metabolism in rock climbers—examining both systemic and localized muscular responses. Before transitioning into academia, he worked in patient care, applying his coaching background and exercise science expertise to improve health outcomes. His experience has shaped a teaching style grounded in interpersonal communication, creating engaging and dynamic learning environments that foster growth, curiosity, and academic success.
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August 22, 2025
Transforming Classroom Discussions with Communication Practices from Health Coaching – Faculty Focus
Classroom discussions are among the most enriching aspects of higher education, offering students opportunities to engage with peers, deepen their understanding of course material, and draw meaningful connections between concepts. For instructors, these discussions serve as a powerful tool to foster collaboration, assess comprehension, and create a more dynamic and inclusive learning environment. Yet, leading effective discussions can be challenging, especially when students are hesitant to participate or when conversations lack depth and substance.

The field of health coaching—where communication is central to guiding clients toward greater self-awareness and behavior change—offers a valuable framework for enhancing classroom dialogue. Health coaching is a collaborative process that relies on intentional and empathetic communication to help clients explore their motivations, clarify their goals, and take ownership of their progress. By applying key communication strategies from this field, educators can elevate the quality of classroom discussions and create more meaningful interactions with students. This article explores how three core techniques from health coaching — the OARS framework (open-ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and summarization), rephrasing, and active listening — can be adapted to the classroom to facilitate deeper, more personally relevant conversations.

The OARS Framework

First and foremost, good discussions begin with good questions. Consider the principles contained in the acronym “OARS” to shape the way you formulate questions and listen to responses, facilitating more interactive and less directive discussions.

O: Open-ended questions: Ask questions that require more than discrete responses. Avoid questions that can be answered with “yes,” “no,” or a number. Instead of asking “Are people motivated solely by monetary incentives?”, consider asking: “Tell us about your sources of motivation,” “Why might people not be motivated when provided an incentive?” and “What, in your experience, have you seen motivate your peers to…?” When used effectively, open-ended questions encourage students to think more deeply and progress in their understanding. They can even prompt students to introduce classroom topics without the instructor ever having to explicitly steer the discussion in a particular direction.

A: Affirmations: Don’t hesitate to provide positive statements that acknowledge a student’s contribution. Affirmations foster respect and support an inclusive teaching climate; however, the affirmations must be genuine and authentic. Students notice when the instructor simply says “Great comment” or “Good question” to a majority of students’ responses. Remember, this isn’t an interrogation but a dialogue. Consider the potential impact of statements like: “Sara, thanks for volunteering to share your thoughts about applications of aerobic energy production in exercise programming,” or “Javier, I really appreciate how your comments reflect Van Gogh’s perspective on his use of sunflowers in his paintings.”

RS: Reflective Listening and Summarization: Reflective listening occurs when the instructor reflects back to the student the core elements of their contribution to the discussion. Reflective listening provides an excellent opportunity for the instructor to confirm their understanding of the student’s comments, as well as directing the conversation forward. In this step in the OARS framework, it may be appropriate to ask either a yes/no or an open-ended question. For example, “John, you’re saying personal accomplishment can be a powerful motivator among mountain athletes, is that right?” or “It seems like something is missing in our understanding of what happens when we introduce financial incentive to these groups. What do you think would happen if…?” When applied to the discussion as a whole, a summary of the main points made from the instructor’s perspective can be a great way to remind students of key points, reinforce the instructor’s informal assessment of student learning, as well as introduce the next topic or item in the lesson plan of the day.

Application Moment: Consider how you might have applied these principles of the OARS framework to a recent group discussion you led in class.

While the OARS framework provides an excellent guideline for how an instructor can improve the overall quality discussions, the following two techniques will provide concrete recommendations on what to say and how to act during the discussion.

Rephrasing

Remember the importance of good questions for good discussions? To take things one step further, consider the technique of rephrasing. To encourage deeper topic exploration, consider restructuring questions by replacing the intended question word (e.g., “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” or “how”) with a different one. For example, an instructor may want to ask, “How can we increase motivation?” and might rephrase that question as, “What factors increase motivation?” or “Where do you feel the most/least motivated?” or “Who demonstrates the most/least motivation?” or “Why does motivation ebb and flow?” or “When are you most/least motivated?” By changing the question word, the instructor can steer the discussion to change how students think about the question, perhaps eliciting a list of possible outcomes (e.g. “What are the factors?”) or explore possible mechanisms/antecedents (e.g., “Why might motivation decline in competitive settings?”) or to help the students develop their ability to embody or conceptualize new perspectives (e.g. “How do financial incentives impact different groups or individuals? John, you represent a group of…”). This can provide depth to the conversation, encourage creativity and application of concepts in discussion, and allows for the exploration of a variety of interesting tangents.

Application Moment: Write down a discussion question from your last class instruction. Rephrase the question using each of the common question words (“who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, “why”, “how”). Consider the types of responses each question word will elicit.

Active Listening

Last, but not least, active listening: Often, instructors forget that when a question is asked, a response is on the way. It can be surprisingly difficult to fully engage with student responses, as it requires the instructor to focus on what the student is saying rather than on what they will say next. The instructor’s first job is to focus on what students are saying rather than their (the instructor’s) response. The following strategies promote active listening in the classroom during discussions:
- Provide adequate time for student responses.
- Don’t be afraid of silence. Silence provides you and your students time to think.
- Call on students by their first name when you engage with them.
- Get out from behind your lectern and casually move toward the student who is speaking.
- Nod and use affirmations (e.g., nodding or stating “nice insight, Paul”).
- Paraphrase when appropriate (“What I hear you saying, Paul, is that….”) – see “rephrasing/summarization” under the OARS framework.
Fostering meaningful classroom discussions is both an art and a skill—one that can be significantly enhanced by drawing on the principles of communication in health coaching. By integrating techniques such as the OARS framework, rephrasing, and active listening, instructors can create more engaging, inclusive, and thought-provoking learning environments. These strategies not only encourage deeper student participation but also help build a classroom culture rooted in empathy, curiosity, and mutual respect. As higher education continues to evolve, integrating communication practices from other disciplines can be a powerful means of enriching the educational experience and enhancing student learning.

Maria Newton, PhD, F-AASP, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Utah. She holds a BA from the University of California, Davis, an MS from California State University, Chico, and a PhD from Purdue University, with specialized training in sport and exercise motivation. Dr. Newton’s research focuses on achievement motivation, specifically how perceptions of the climate influence motivational striving. Her most recent contributions to the literature have focused on how creating a caring and task-involving climate fosters motivation. With over 30 years of experience in higher education, Dr. Newton brings extensive expertise in teaching a variety of courses in diverse formats. Recognized with numerous teaching awards, she is deeply committed to cultivating an inclusive and intellectually stimulating climate that inspires learning and personal growth.

Jefferson Brewer, MS, CSCS, ACSM EP, is an Associate Instructor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Utah. He holds a BS in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Exercise Science and an MS in Kinesiology focused on Health and Wellness Coaching, both from the University of Utah. He is currently completing his dissertation for a PhD in Integrated Health Science at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions. Jefferson’s research centers on metabolism in rock climbers—examining both systemic and localized muscular responses. Before transitioning into academia, he worked in patient care, applying his coaching background and exercise science expertise to improve health outcomes. His experience has shaped a teaching style grounded in interpersonal communication, creating engaging and dynamic learning environments that foster growth, curiosity, and academic success.
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August 22, 2025
Mental health screeners help ID hidden needs, research finds

Key points:

A new DESSA screener to be released for the Fall ‘25 school year–designed to be paired with a strength-based student self-report assessment–accurately predicted well-being levels in 70 percent of students, a study finds.

According to findings from Riverside Insights, creator of research-backed assessments, researchers found that even students with strong social-emotional skills often struggle with significant mental health concerns, challenging the assumption that resilience alone indicates student well-being. The study, which examined outcomes in 254 middle school students across the United States, suggests that combining risk and resilience screening can enable identification of students who would otherwise be missed by traditional approaches.

“This research validates what school mental health professionals have been telling us for years–that traditional screening approaches miss too many students,” said Dr. Evelyn Johnson, VP of Research & Development at Riverside Insights. “When educators and counselors can utilize a dual approach to identify risk factors, they can pinpoint concerns and engage earlier, in and in a targeted way, before concerns become major crises.”

The study, which offered evidence of, for example, social skills deficits among students with no identifiable or emotional behavioral concerns, provides the first empirical evidence that consideration of both risk and resilience can enhance the predictive benefits of screening, when compared to strengths-based screening alone.

In the years following COVID, many educators noted a feeling that something was “off” with students, despite DESSA assessments indicating that things were fine.

“We heard this feedback from lots of different customers, and it really got our team thinking–we’re clearly missing something, even though the assessment of social-emotional skills is critically important and there’s evidence to show the links to better academic outcomes and better emotional well-being outcomes,” Johnson said. “And yet, we’re not tapping something that needs to be tapped.”

For a long time, if a person displayed no outward or obvious mental health struggles, they were thought to be mentally healthy. In investigating the various theories and frameworks guiding mental health issues, Riverside Insight’s team dug into Dr. Shannon Suldo‘s work, which centers around the dual factor model.

“What the dual factor approach really suggests is that the absence of problems is not necessarily equivalent to good mental health–there really are these two factors, dual factors, we talk about them in terms of risk and resilience–that really give you a much more complete picture of how a student is doing,” Johnson said.

“The efficacy associated with this dual-factor approach is encouraging, and has big implications for practitioners struggling to identify risk with limited resources,” said Jim Bowler, general manager of the Classroom Division at Riverside Insights. “Schools told us they needed a way to identify students who might be struggling beneath the surface. The DESSA SEIR ensures no student falls through the cracks by providing the complete picture educators need for truly preventive mental health support.”

The launch comes as mental health concerns among students reach crisis levels. More than 1 in 5 students considered attempting suicide in 2023, while 60 percent of youth with major depression receive no mental health treatment. With school psychologist-to-student ratios at 1:1065 (recommended 1:500) and counselor ratios at 1:376 (recommended 1:250), schools need preventive solutions that work within existing resources.

The DESSA SEIR will be available for the 2025-2026 school year.

This press release originally appeared online.

eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.

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August 21, 2025
Autistic College Students Face Dramatically Higher Rates of Mental Health Challenges, New Research Shows

Autistic college students are experiencing anxiety and depression at significantly higher rates than their non-autistic peers, according to new research from Binghamton University that analyzed data from nearly 150,000 undergraduate students across 342 institutions nationwide.

The study, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, represents one of the most comprehensive examinations to date of mental health challenges facing autistic students in higher education—a population that researchers say has been historically underrepresented in academic research despite growing enrollment numbers.

“What we found is really staggering—autistic individuals endorse much higher rates of anxiety and depression compared to their non-autistic peers,” said Diego Aragon-Guevara, the study’s lead author and a PhD student in psychology at Binghamton University.

The research team analyzed data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), which in 2021 became the first year that autism was included as an endorsable category in the survey. This milestone allowed researchers to conduct the first large-scale comparison of mental health outcomes between autistic and non-autistic college students.

“We were really excited to see what the data would tell us. It was a big opportunity to be able to do this,” said Dr. Jennifer Gillis Mattson, professor of psychology and co-director of the Institute for Child Development at Binghamton University, who co-authored the study.

The findings come at a critical time for higher education institutions as autism diagnoses continue to rise nationwide and more autistic students pursue college degrees. The research highlights a significant gap in support services that could impact student success and retention.

“We know the number of autistic college students continues to increase every single year,” Gillis-Mattson noted. “We really do have an obligation to support these students, and to know how best to support these students, we need to look beyond just autism.”

The study reveals that campus support systems may be inadvertently overlooking mental health needs while focusing primarily on autism-specific accommodations. Aragon-Guevara, whose research focuses on improving quality of life for autistic adults, said this represents a critical oversight in student services.

“Support personnel might address an individual’s autism and, in the process, overlook their mental health issues,” he explained. “More care needs to be put into addressing that nuance.”

The research underscores the need for institutions to develop more comprehensive support frameworks that address both autism-related needs and concurrent mental health challenges. The findings suggest that traditional disability services approaches may need significant enhancement to serve this population effectively.

“We want to provide the best support for them and to make sure that they have a college experience where they get a lot out of it, but also feel comfortable,” Aragon-Guevara said.

Dr. Hyejung Kim, an assistant professor in Binghamton’s Department of Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership, noted that the complexity of factors affecting autistic students requires deeper investigation.

“This population often skews male, and interactions between personal factors and conditions such as anxiety and depression may shape overall well-being in college,” she said.

Kim also pointed to additional considerations that institutions should examine.

“Autistic students are also more likely to pursue STEM fields, and many report different experiences with faculty and staff across institutional settings,” she said. “We still have much to learn about how these and other contextual factors relate to mental well-being.”

The Binghamton team views this study as foundational research that confirms the scope of mental health challenges among autistic college students. Their next phase will investigate specific contributing factors, including social dynamics, faculty support, campus accessibility, and other environmental elements that influence student well-being.

“There are so many elements that go into being comfortable in the new environment that is college,” Aragon-Guevara explained. “We want to look into that and see if there are any deficits in those areas that autistic college students are experiencing, so that we know where we can help support them, or create institutional things to help improve quality of life as a whole.”

The research is part of a broader effort at Binghamton to better understand and support autistic students in higher education, with plans to collaborate with campus partners to develop targeted interventions based on their findings.

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August 15, 2025
Peer Mentors Help Students Navigate Health Graduate Programs

As a first-year student at Emory University, Leia Marshall walked into the Pathways Center to receive advice on her career goals.

She was a neuroscience and behavioral biology major who thought she might go to medical school. But after meeting with a peer mentor, Marshall realized she was more interested in optometry. “I didn’t really know a lot about the prehealth track. I didn’t really know if I wanted to do medicine at all,” she said. “Getting to speak to a peer mentor really affected the way that I saw my trajectory through my time at Emory and onwards.”

Emory opened the Pathways Center in August 2022, uniting five different student-facing offices: career services, prehealth advising, undergraduate research, national scholarships and fellowships, and experiential learning, said Branden Grimmett, associate dean of the center.

“It brings together what were existing functions but are now streamlined to make it easier for students to access,” Grimmett said.

The pre–health science peer mentor program engages hundreds of students each year through office hours, advising appointments, club events and other engagements, helping undergraduates navigate their time at Emory and beyond in health science programs.

The background: Prehealth advising has been a fixture at Emory for 20 years, led by a team of staff advisers and 30 peer mentors. The office helps students know the options available to them within health professions and that they’re meeting degree requirements to enter these programs. A majority of Emory’s prehealth majors are considering medicine, but others hope to study veterinary medicine, dentistry or optometry, like Marshall.

How it works: The pre–health science mentors are paid student employees, earning approximately $15 an hour. The ideal applicant is a rising junior or senior who has a passion for helping others, Grimmett said.

Mentors also serve on one of four subcommittees—connect, prepare, explore and apply—representing different phases of the graduate school process.

Mentors are recruited for the role in the spring and complete a written application as well as an interview process. Once hired, students participate in a daylong training alongside other student employees in the Pathways Center. Mentors also receive touch-up training in monthly team meetings with their supervisors, Grimmett said.

Peer mentors host office hours in the Pathways Center and advertise their services through digital marketing, including a dedicated Instagram account and weekly newsletter.

Peer-to-peer engagement: Marshall became a peer mentor her junior year and is giving the same advice and support to her classmates that she received. In a typical day, she said she’ll host office hours, meeting with dozens of students and offering insight, resources and advice.

“Sometimes students are coming in looking for general advice on their schedule for the year or what classes to take,” she said. “A lot of the time, we have students come in and ask about how to get involved with research or find clinical opportunities in Atlanta or on campus, so it really ranges and varies.”

Sometimes Marshall’s job is just to be there for the student and listen to their concerns.

“Once I met with a student who came in and she was really nervous about this feeling that she wasn’t doing enough,” Marshall said. “There’s this kind of impostor phenomenon that you’re not involved in enough extracurriculars, you’re not doing enough to set you up for success.”

Marshall is able to relate to these students and help them reflect on their experiences.

“That’s been one of my favorite parts of being a peer mentor: getting to help students recognize their strengths and guide them through things that I’ve been through myself,” she said.

In addition to assisting their classmates, peer mentors walk away with résumé experience and better career discernment, Grimmett said. “Often our students learn a lot about their own path as they’re in dialogue with other students. It’s a full circle for many of our peer mentors.”

“It’s funny to think about the fact that our role is to help others, but it really helps all of us as peer mentors as well,” Marshall said. “We learn to connect with a variety of students, and I think it’s been really valuable for me to connect with the advisers myself and get to know them better.”

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This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Branden Grimmett’s name.

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August 12, 2025
Pa. Clinic Run by Students Supports Community Health
Experiential learning opportunities provide students with a space to connect in-classroom learning to real-world situations. A student-run clinic at Widener University provides graduate health science professional students with hands-on learning and career experiences while supporting community health and well-being for Chester, Pa., residents.

The Chester Community Clinic was founded in 2009 for physical therapy services but has since expanded to cover other health and wellness services, including occupational therapy and speech-language pathology. The clinic gives students studying those fields leadership opportunities, experience working with diverse clients and the confidence to tackle their professional careers.

What’s the need: Before the clinic was established, physical therapy students at Widener would volunteer at a pro bono clinic in nearby Philadelphia. But students pushed for a clinic within Chester, which is considered a primary care health professional shortage area, meaning it lacks enough providers to serve the local population.

For some patients, a lack of health insurance can impede their ability to receive care. In Pennsylvania, 5.4 percent of residents are without private or public health insurance, roughly two percentage points lower than the national average. The clinic addresses gaps in health care by providing services for free while educating future health science professionals.

How it works: The clinic is led by a board of 12 to 14 students from each class and supervised by faculty and community members who are licensed physical therapists. Students begin service in their second semester of the program and participate in the clinic until their final clinical placement.

Most clients are referred by a physician but have been turned away from local PT clinics due to a lack of health insurance or because they exceeded the allotted insurance benefits for PT.

During appointments, students provide direct physical therapy services to patients, including making care plans, walking them through exercises and creating medical records.

Over the years, the clinic has expanded to include occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, clinical psychology and social work services. In 2024, Widener included a Community Nursing Clinic to provide pro bono services as well.

All students studying physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech-language pathology at Widener volunteer at the clinic as part of the program requirements. PT students are required to serve a minimum of three evenings per semester; board members typically serve more hours.

The clinic’s multifaceted offerings increase opportunities for students to work across departments, engaging with their peers in other health professions to establish interdisciplinary plans for care.
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Other colleges and universities offer pro bono student services to support community members and organizations:

Gonzaga University has a student-led sports consulting agency that offers strategy ideas and tools to sports brands and teams.

Utah Valley University students can intern with a semester-long program that provides digital marketing to businesses in the region.

American University’s Kogod School of Business has a business consulting group that provides students with project-based consulting experience.

Carroll University faculty and students in the behavioral health psychology master’s program run a free mental health clinic for those in the area.
The impact: Since the clinic began in 2009, students have provided over 12,000 physical therapy appointments to community members, worth about $1.3 million in costs, according to a 2024 press release from the university.

A 2017 program evaluation, published in the Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice, found that PT students who served in the pro bono clinic felt more equipped to launch into clinical work. They were prepared to manage documentation, use clinical reasoning and engage in interprofessional communication.

A 2020 study of the clinic also found that students performed better than expected in cultural competence, perhaps due to their experience engaging with clients from a variety of ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, health literacy levels, religions and languages.

Both Widener and students in the health science professions continue to support the development of other pro bono clinics. The class of 2015 created The Pro Bono Network, facilitating advancement of student-run pro bono services among 109 member institutions across the country. This past spring, Widener’s annual Pro Bono Network Conference welcomed 250 individuals working at or affiliated with pro bono clinics, and featured 32 student leaders presenting their work.

How do your students gain hands-on experience and give back? Tell us more.

This article has been updated to reflect the addition of a pro bono nursing clinic in 2024, not the creation of it, and to identify students as health science professional students, not health professional students.
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July 16, 2025
How Labour’s 10-year health plan for England joins up with higher education and research

The government wants to reinvent the NHS (in England) through three radical shifts – hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention.

Whether like the chief executive of the NHS you believe Labour’s 10-year health plan for England is about creating “energy and enthusiasm”, whether like the secretary of state you believe this is about building a NHS which is about “the future and a fairer Britain,” or whether across its 168 pages you find the government’s default to techno-optimism, AI will solve everything, one more dataset will fix public services, approach to governance to be somewhere between naive and unduly optimistic, it is clear that the NHS is expected to change and do so quickly.

This is a plan that is as much about the reorganisation of the economy as it is about health. It is about how health services can get people into work, it is a guide to economic growth through innovation in life sciences, it is a lament for the skills needed and the skills not yet thought about for the future of the NHS.

Elsewhere on the site, Jim Dickinson looks at the (lack of) implications for students as group with health needs – here we look at the implications for education, universities, and the wider knowledge economy.

Workforce modelling

One of the premises of the plan is that the 2023 Conservative long-term workforce plan was a mistake. The NHS clearly cannot go on as it currently is, and to facilitate this transformation a “very different kind of workforce strategy” is needed:

Until 2023, [the NHS] had never published a long-term workforce plan. The one it did publish did little more than extrapolate from past trends into the future: concluding there was no alternative than continuation of our current care model, supported by an inexorable growth in headcount, mostly working in acute settings.

A new workforce place is being put together, to appear “later this year” and taking a “decidedly different approach”:

Instead of asking ‘how many staff do we need to maintain our current care model over the next 10 years?’, it will ask ‘given our reform plan, what workforce do we need, what should they do, where should they be deployed and what skills should they have?’

The bottom line is that, therefore, “there will be fewer staff in the NHS in 2035 than projected by the 2023 workforce plan” – but these staff will have better conditions, better training, and “more exciting roles”.

So one immediate question for universities in England is what this reduced staffing target means for recruitment onto medical, nursing and allied health degrees. Places have been expanding, and under previous plans were set to expand at growing rates in the coming years, including a doubling of medical school places by 2035. There were questions about how optimistic some of the objectives were – the National Audit Office last year criticised NHS England for not having assessed the feasibility of expanding places, in light of issues like attrition rates and the need to invest in clinical placement infrastructure.

We won’t get a clear answer of what Labour is proposing until the new workforce plan emerges – especially as there is an accompanying aspiration in today’s plan to reduce the NHS’ dependence on international recruitment. But there are some clear directions of travel. Creating more apprenticeships gets a mention – though of course not at level 7 – but the key theme is a tight link between growing medical student numbers and widening participation:

Expansion of medical school places will be targeted at medical schools with a proven track record of widening participation… The admissions process to medical school will be improved with better information, signposting and support for applicants, and more systematic use of contextual admissions.

This is accompanied by endorsement of the Sutton Trust’s recent research into access disparities. And in one of those “holding universities to account” measures that everyone is so keen on, part of reinforcing this link will be done via work with the Department for Education to “publish data on the relevant background of university entrants, starting with medicine.” If you are thinking that we already did that – yes we did. The UK-wide HESA widening participation performance indicator was last published in 2022 – each regulator now has their own version (for example this from the Office for Students) which doesn’t quite do the same thing.

Education and students

Of course, creating more pathways into working in the NHS is one mechanism to grow its workforce. The other is to unblock current pathways that prevent people from getting into and getting on with their chosen careers in health.

For example, there is a (somewhat tepid) commitment on student support: the plan commits to “explore options” on improving the financial support on offer to medical students from the lowest socioeconomic backgrounds.

For nursing students, the offer is slimmer still – a focus on the “financial obstacles to learning”, including faster reimbursement of placement expenses, and tackling the time lag between completing a course and being able to start work. This latter measure will involve working with higher education institutions to revise the current approach to course completion confirmation, and is billed for September 2026. The Royal College of Nursing has suggested that these “modest” changes go nowhere near far enough.

Nursing and midwifery attrition also comes under scrutiny – the government spots that reducing the rate of non-continuation by a percentage point would result in the equivalent of 300 more nurses and midwives joining the NHS each year. But rather than looking deeper at why this is a growing issue, the buck is handed over to education providers to “urgently address attrition rates.”

Elsewhere the interventions into education provision are more substantial. There’s an already ongoing review of medical training for NHS staff, due to report imminently. On top of this, the plan sets out how the next three years will see an “overhaul” of education and training curricula, to “future-proof” the workforce. There’s lots of talk about faster changes to course content as and when needed, to reflect changes in how the NHS will operate. This comes with a warning:

Where existing providers are unable to move at the right pace, we may look to different institutions to ensure that the education market is responsive to employer needs.

Clinical placement tariffs for undergraduate and postgraduate medicine will be reformed – the plan suggests the tariff system currently “provides limited ability to target funding at training where it is most needed to modernise delivery,” and wants to do more in community settings and make better use of simulation. There will also be expansion of clinical educator capacity, though this will be “targeted” (which is often code for limited).

And course lengths could fall – the plan promises to “work with higher education institutions and the professional regulators as they review course length in light of technological developments and a transition to lifelong rather than static training.” While this does not explicitly suggest shorter medical and nursing programmes – and a consequent growth in provision aimed at professionals – the preference is pretty obvious.

On that last point every member of NHS staff will get their own “personalised career coaching and development plan” which will come alongside the development of “advanced practice models” for nurses (and all the other professional roles in the NHS: radiographers, pharmacists, and the like).

Data and (wider) employment

The plan stretches much wider than simply making commitments on training though and, as the plan makes clear, if the answer isn’t always going to be more money there has to be more efficiency.

There’s a fascinating set of commitments linking health and work – one of those things that feel clunky and obvious until you note that “getting the long-term sick back into work” has just been a soundbite with punitive vibes until now.

Of course, everything has a slightly cringeworthy name – so NHS Accelerators will support local NHS services to have an “impact on people’s work status”, something that may grow into specific and measurable outcomes linking to economic inactivity and unemployment and link in other local government partners. And health support in the traditional sense will link with wider holistic support (as set out in the Pathways to Work green paper) for people with disabilities.

There’s also a set of commitments on understanding and supporting the mental health needs of young people – although the focus is on schools and colleges, there is an expectation that universities will play a part in a forthcoming National Youth Strategy (due from the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport “this summer”) which will cover support for “mental health, wellbeing, and the ability to develop positive social connections.”

All these joined up services will need joined up data, so happy news, too, for those looking for wrap-around support in transitions between educational phases – there will be a single unique identifier for young people: the NHS number. And for fans of learner analytics, a similar approach (with a sprinkling of genomics) will “tell [the NHS] the likelihood of a person developing a condition before it occurs, support early detection of disease, and enable personalised prevention and treatment”.

For some time, universities and other trusted partners have benefited from access to deidentified NHS healthcare administrative data via ADRUK – which has been used for everything from developing new medicine to understanding health policy. This will be joined by a new commercially-focused Health Data Research Service (HDRS) backed by the Wellcome Trust. This is not a new announcement, but the slant here is that it will support the private sector – and as such there will be efforts to “make sure the NHS receives a fair deal for providing access”, which could include a mix of access charges and equity stakes in new developments.

Research, research, research

In effect, the government’s proposals set out how improving the conditions, configurations, and coordination of the NHS workforce, and the information provided to them and their partners, can improve healthcare. The next challenge then is targeting the right kinds of information in the right places, and this depends on the quality of research the NHS can access, make use of, and produce.

The health of the nation does not begin and end at the hospital door. As The King’s Fund points out, “we can’t duck the reality that we are an international outlier with stagnating life expectancy and with millions living many years of life in poor health.” The point of this plan is not only about making health services better but about narrowing health inequalities and using life sciences research to grow the economy.

The plan talks about making up for a “lost decade” of life sciences research. In doing so, it cites an IPPR report (the author is now DHSC’s lead strategy advisor) which demonstrates that the global research spend on life sciences in the UK has reduced and that this has had an impact on life sciences GVA. Following this line of thought suggests that if the UK had maintained levels of investment the economy would have got bigger, people’s lives would have been better and because of the link between poverty and ill health, the NHS would be under less pressure.

The issue with this citation is that the figures used are from 2011–16 and some of the remedies, like association to Horizon Europe, are things the UK has done. Though the plan makes clear that “the era of the NHS’ answer always being ‘more money, never reform’ is over,” it is in fact the case that the government has ploughed record levels of public money into R&D without fundamental reform to the research ecosystem. The premise that economic growth can be spurred by research and leads to better health outcomes is correct – but it isn’t necessary to reference research carried out in 2019 to make the case.

This isn’t merely an annoyance – it speaks to a wider challenge within the plan which oscillates widely between the optimism that “all hospitals will be fully AI-enabled” within the next ten years (80 per cent of hospitals were still using pagers in 2023 despite their ban in 2019), and the obviously sensible commitment to establish Health Innovation Zones which will bring health partners within a devolved framework to experiment in service innovation.

The fundamental challenge facing innovation within health is the diffusion of priorities. There are both a lot of things the NHS and life science researchers might focus their time on, and a lot of layers of bureaucracies that inhibit research. The plan attempts to organise research priorities around five “big bets” (read missions but not quite missions). These include the use of health data, the use of AI (again), personalised health, wearables, and the use of robots. One of the mechanisms for aligning resources will be:

a new bidding process for new Global Institutes. Supported by NIHR funding, these institutes will be expected to marshal the assets of a place – industry, universities, the NHS – to drive genuine global leadership on research and translation.

It’s very industrial strategy – the government is setting out big ideas with some incentives, and hoping the public and private sector follows.

There are some more structural changes to research aside from the political rhetoric. Significantly, there is a proposal to change the funding approaches of the Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health and Care Research to pivot funding toward “prevention, detection and treatment of longterm conditions”. The hope is this approach will drive private investment. Again, like the industrial strategy, the rationale is that the state can be an enabling force for growing the economy.

Ten years’ time

The ten year plan, if it is to mean anything, has to be focused on delivering a different kind of health service. The fundamental shift is about moving toward personalised community orientated care. The concern is that the plan is light on delivery, which would tally with reports that a ninth chapter on delivery is missing all together.

The NHS is stuck in a forever cycle of reform, failing to reform, entering crises, and then being bailed out from crises. The mechanisms to break the cycle includes changes to the workforce, new skills provision, using data differently, and reorientating life sciences research toward prevention and economic growth.

The higher education sector, research institutes, and companies working in research are not only central to the new vision of a NHS but with the amount of investment placed on their capacity to bring change they are no less than the midwives of it. The government’s biggest bet is that it can grow the economy, improve people’s lives, and in doing so reduce pressure on public services. Its biggest risk is that it believes it can do this without fundamental reform to higher education or research as well.

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July 4, 2025
Defunding level 7 apprenticeships in health and care may backfire on lower levels

Well, it finally happened. Level 7 apprenticeship funding will disappear for all but a very limited number of younger people from January 2026.

The shift in focus from level 7 to funding more training for those aged 21 and under seems laudable – and of course we all want opportunities for young people – but will it solve or create more problems for the health and social care workforce?

The introduction of foundation apprenticeships, aimed at bringing 16- to 21-year-olds into the workforce, includes health and social care. Offering employer incentives should be a good thing, right?

Care is not merely a job

Of course we need to widen opportunities for careers in health and social care, one of the guaranteed growth industries for the foreseeable future regardless of the current funding challenges. But the association of foundation apprenticeships with those not in education, employment or training (NEETs) gives the wrong impression of the importance of high-quality care for the most vulnerable sectors of our society.

Delivering personal care, being an effective advocate, or dealing with challenging behaviours in high pressured environments requires a level of skill, professionalism and confidence that should not be incentivised as simply a route out of unemployment.

Employers and education providers invest significant time and energy in crafting a workforce that can deliver values-based care, regardless of the care setting. Care is not merely a job: it’s a vocation that needs to be held in high esteem, otherwise we risk demeaning those that need our care and protection.

There are already a successful suite of apprenticeships leading to careers in health and social care, which the NHS in particular makes good use of. Social care providers (generally smaller employers) report challenges in funding or managing apprenticeships, but there are excellent examples of where this is working well.

So, do we need something at foundation level? How does that align with T level or level 2 apprenticeship experiences? If these pathways already exist and numbers are disappointing, why bring another product onto the market? And are we sending the correct message to the wider public about the value of careers in health and social care?

Career moves

The removal of funding for level 7 apprenticeships serves as a threat to the existing career development framework – and it may yet backfire on foundation or level 2 apprenticeships. The opportunity to develop practitioners into enhanced or advanced roles in the NHS is not only critical to the delivery of health services in the future, but it also offers a career development and skills escalator mechanism.

By removing this natural progression, the NHS will see role stagnation – which threatens workforce retention. We know that the opportunity to develop new skills or move into advanced roles is a significant motivator for employees.

If senior practitioners are not able to move up, out or across into new roles, how will those entering at lower levels advance? Where are the career prospects that the NHS has spent years developing and honing? Although we are still awaiting the outcome of the consultation around the 10-year plan – due for publication this week with revisions to the long-term workforce plan to follow – I feel confident in predicting that we will need new roles or skill sets to successfully deliver care.

So, if no development is happening through level 7 apprenticeships, where is the money going to come from? The NHS has been suggesting that there will be alternative funding streams for some level 7 qualifications, but this is unlikely to offer employers the flexibility or choice they had through the levy.

Could level 6 be next?

Degree apprenticeships at level 6 have also come in for some criticism about the demographics of those securing apprenticeship opportunities and how this has impacted opportunities for younger learners – an extrapolation of the arguments that were made against level 7 courses.

Recent changes to the apprenticeship funding rules, requirements of off the job training and the anticipated changes to end-point assessment could lead to pre-registration apprenticeships in nursing and allied health being deemed no longer in line with the policy intent because of the regulatory requirements associated with them.

The workforce plan of 2023 outlined the need for significant growth of the health and social care workforce, an ambition that probably is still true although how and when this will happen may change. Research conducted by the University of Derby and University Alliance demonstrated some of the significant successes associated with apprenticeship schemes in the NHS, but also highlighted some of the challenges. Even with changes to apprenticeship policy, these challenges will not disappear.

Our research also highlighted challenges associated with the bureaucracy of apprenticeships, the need for stronger relationships between employers and providers, flexibility in how the levy is used to build capacity and how awareness of the apprenticeship “brand” needs to be promoted.

A core feature of workforce development

The security of our future health and social care workforce lies in careers being built from the ground up, regardless of whether career development is funded by individuals themselves or via apprenticeships. However, the transformative nature of apprenticeships, the associated social mobility, the organisational benefits and the drive to deliver high quality care in multiple settings means that we should not be quick to walk further away from the apprenticeship model.

Offering apprenticeships at higher (and all) academic levels is critical to delivering high quality care and encouraging people to remain engaged in the sector.

So, as Skills England start to roll out change, it is crucial that both the NHS and higher education remain close to policymakers, supporting and challenging decisions being made. While there are challenges, these can be overcome or worked through. The solutions arrived at may not always be easy, but they have to be evidence-based and fully focused on the need to deliver a health and social care workforce of which the UK can be proud.

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June 30, 2025
Data Shows Uptake of Statewide Digital Mental Health Support

In 2023, New Jersey’s Office of the Secretary of Higher Education signed a first-of-its-kind agreement with a digital mental health provider, Uwill, to provide free access to virtual mental health services to college students across the state.

Over the past two years, 18,000-plus students across 45 participating colleges and universities have registered with the service, representing about 6 percent of the eligible postsecondary population. The state considers the partnership a success and hopes to codify the offering to ensure its sustainability beyond the current governor’s term.

The details: New Jersey’s partnership with Uwill was spurred by a 2021 survey of 15,500 undergraduate and graduate students from 60 institutions in the state, which found that 70 percent of respondents rated their stress and anxiety as higher in fall 2021 than in fall 2020. Forty percent indicated they were concerned about their mental health in light of the pandemic.

Under the agreement, students can use Uwill’s teletherapy, crisis connection and wellness programming at any time. Like others in the teletherapy space, Uwill offers an array of diverse licensed mental health providers, giving students access to therapists who share their backgrounds or language, or who reside in their state. Over half (55 percent) of the counselors Uwill hires in New Jersey are Black, Indigenous or people of color; among them, they speak 11 languages.

What makes Uwill distinct from its competitors is that therapy services are on-demand, meaning students are matched with a counselor within minutes of logging on to the platform. Students can request to see the same counselor in the future, but the nearly immediate access ensures they are not caught in long wait or intake times, especially compared to in-person counseling services.

Under New Jersey’s agreement, colleges and students do not pay for Uwill services, but colleges must receive state aid to be eligible.

The research: The need for additional counseling capacity on college campuses has grown over the past decade, as an increasing number of students enter higher education with pre-existing mental health conditions. The most recent survey of counseling center staff by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD) found that while demand for services is on the decline compared to recent years, a larger number of students have more serious conditions.

Over half of four-year institutions and about one-third of community colleges nationwide provide teletherapy to students via third-party vendors, according to AUCCCD data. The average number of students who engaged with services in 2024 was 453, across institution size.

Online therapy providers tout the benefits of having a service that supplements on-campus, in-person therapists’ services to provide more comprehensive care, including racially and ethnically diverse staff, after-hours support and on-demand resources for students.

Eric Wood, director of counseling and mental health at Texas Christian University, told Inside Higher Ed that an ideal teletherapy vendor is one that increases capacity for on-campus services, expanding availability for on-campus staff and ensuring that students do not fall through the cracks.

A 2024 analysis of digital mental health tools from the Hope Center at Temple University—which did not include Uwill—found they can improve student mental health, but there is little direct evidence regarding marginalized student populations’ use of or benefits from them. Instead, the greatest benefit appears to be for students who would not otherwise engage in traditional counseling or who simply seek preventative resources.

One study featured in the Hope Center’s report noted the average student only used their campus’s wellness app or teletherapy service once; the report calls for more transparency around usage data prior to institutional investment.

The data: Uwill reported that from April 2023 to May 2025, 18,207 New Jersey students engaged in their services at the 45 participating institutions, which include Princeton, Rutgers, Montclair State and Seton Hall Universities, as well as the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Stevens Institute of Technology. Engaged students were defined as any students who logged in to the app and created an account.

New Jersey’s total college enrollment in 2022 was 378,819, according to state data. An Inside Higher Ed analysis of publicly available data found total enrollment (including undergraduate and graduate students) among the 45 participating colleges to be 327,353. Uwill participants in New Jersey, therefore, totaled around 4 percent of the state’s postsecondary students or 6 percent of eligible students.

The state paid $4 million for the first year of the Uwill contract, as reported by Higher Ed Dive, pulling dollars from a $10 million federal grant to support pandemic relief and a $16 million budget allocation for higher education partnerships. That totals about $89,000 per institution for the first year alone, or $12 per eligible student, according to an Inside Higher Ed estimate.

In a 2020 interview with Inside Higher Ed, Uwill CEO Michael London said the minimum cost to a college for one year of services is about $25,000, or $10 to $20 per student per year.

New Jersey students met with counselors in more than 78,000 therapy sessions, or about six sessions per student between 2023 and 2025, according to Uwill data. Students also engaged in 548 chat sessions with therapists, sent 6,593 messages and requested 1,216 crisis connections during the first two years of service.

User engagement has slowly ticked up since the partnership launched. In January 2024, the state said more than 7,600 students registered on the platform, scheduling nearly 20,000 sessions. By September 2024, Uwill reported more than 13,000 registered students on the platform, scheduling more than 49,000 sessions. The most recent data, published June 6, identified 18,000 students engaging in 78,000 sessions.

Over 1,200 of Montclair State’s 22,000 students have registered with Uwill since June 2023, Jaclyn Friedman-Lombardo, Montclair State’s director of counseling and psychological services, said at a press conference, or approximately 6 percent of the total campus population.

The state does not require institutions to track student usage data to compare usage to campus counseling center services, but some institutions choose to, according to a spokesperson for both the office of the secretary and Uwill. The secretary’s office can view de-identified campus-level data and institutions can engage with more detailed data, as well.

Creating access: One of the goals of implementing digital mental health interventions is to expand access beyond traditional counseling centers, such as after hours, on weekends or over academic breaks.

Roughly 30 percent of participants in the Uwill partnership completed a session between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m. on a weeknight or on the weekends. Over the 2024–25 winter break, students engaged in 3,073 therapy sessions. More than 90 of those took place outside New Jersey. Students also used Uwill services over summer vacation this past year (9,235 sessions from May 20 to Aug. 26, of which 10 percent took place outside New Jersey).

A majority of users were traditional-aged college students (17 to 24 years old), and 32 percent were white, 25 percent Hispanic and 17 percent Black. The report did not compare participating students’ race to those using on-campus services or general campus populations.

About 85 percent of New Jersey users were looking for a BIPOC therapist, and 9 percent requested therapists who speak languages other than English, including Hindi and Mandarin.

Postsession assessment completed by students who do schedule an appointment has returned positive responses, with a feedback score of 9.5 out of 10 in New Jersey, compared to Uwill’s 9.2 rating nationally.

Unanswered questions: Wood indicated the data leaves some questions left unanswered, such as whether students were also clients at the on-campus counseling center, or if the service had improved students’ mental health over time from a clinical perspective.

“Just because a student had four sessions with a telehealth provider, if they came right back to the counseling center, did it really make an impact on the center’s capacity to see students?” Wood said.

The high cost of the service should also give counseling center directors pause, Wood said, because those dollars could be used for a variety of other interventions to create capacity.

The data indicated some benefits to counseling center capacity, including diverse staff and after-hours support. But to create a true return on investment, counseling centers should calculate how much capacity the tele–mental health service created and its direct impact on student wellness, not just participation in services.

“It would be ideal to compare the number of students receiving services (not just creating an account) through the platform to the number of students who would likely benefit from receiving treatment, as identified by clinically validated mental health screens on population surveys,” said Sara Abelson, assistant professor at the Hope Center and the report’s lead author.

What’s next: New Jersey renewed its contract with Uwill first in January 2024 and then again in May, extending through spring 2026. State leaders said the ongoing services are still supported by pandemic relief funds.

On May 2, New Jersey assemblywoman Andrea Katz from the Eighth District introduced a bill, the Mental Health Early Access on Campus Act, which would require colleges to implement mental health first aid training among campus stakeholders, peer support programs, mental health orientation education and teletherapy services to ensure counseling ratios are one to every 1,250 students per campus. The International Accreditation of Counseling Services recommends universities maintain a ratio of at least one full-time equivalency for every 1,000 to 1,500 students.

“We know that mental health services that our kids need are not going to end when we change governors,” Katz said at a press conference. “We need to make sure that all of this is codified into law.”

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June 20, 2025