It has become widely understood — make that expected — that young people progressing through university will experience some form of stress on their sense of well-being to a certain degree at some point. This can take the form of low-level distress brought on by a change in surroundings and access to established networks. For many, this is a temporary state that they successfully move past with minimal support.

Then there are those where the stress can take the form of established, diagnosed, and complex conditions that are a longer-term challenge, requiring personal management along with professional intervention and support. In between these two realities, there is a multitude of variations and states of well-being that are individual and unique to the person, requiring similarly varying levels of support.

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Has it Always Been This Way?

Our outward and internal interactions with the modern world certainly seem more testing: social media, economics, image, gender, equality, health, politics, and more… so much more. We talk about these things a lot! And we don’t talk about them, because they are uncomfortable and complicated and university-age, young people already often have to go through a considerable number of trials in their daily lives.

They find themselves travelling through this hyper-reality, trying to get a grip, process it, and understand everything— all whilst trying to retain a semblance of authenticity and academic success. And it is tough. And they need help. Sometimes. 

Universities find themselves in this space engaging with cohorts of students, each of them on their journey and when the pressures get too much, universities can be seen as the primary source of support expected to solve all problems. Here lieth the swamp; here there be dragons, so take care and watch out for the pitfalls. Universities need to be careful. They are held to a high standard and have a fine line to walk when it comes to student support services, especially regarding how to deliver them and get them right. 

There is a case that universities are places purely for education with a limited duty of care for student well-being. This is not a position that many universities would now take and, indeed, could not for long in the highly competitive, and market-led higher education sector with students as the consumer. Indeed, it is the support a university can offer during the whole period of study that is important for an increasing number of applicants looking to achieve academic success. With parents, teachers, and the other support services young people have grown up with that come as standard, there are high expectations for the continuation of this support in graduate-level studies. 

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Cutting Through the Noise

So how do universities manage expectations while providing effective services to ensure a safety net for students when needed? Some would say that it’s all about the money, the spending per student head, where then “how many counsellors do you have?” becomes a common line of enquiry. Indeed, cash committed and spent certainly helps with recruitment and media headlines, but does it guarantee the fit-for-purpose services?

Of course, if the money is spent well and if it is targeted with defined outcomes, it can help. But it is not everything, and it doesn’t have to be either. As The Beatles said, “money can’t buy you love”! Of course you need to spend some money, but universities without a big budget, or those with deep pockets still struggling to deliver, can respond to the challenge in a leaner way without squeezing the financial balloon.

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Ready, Set, Collaborate!

So, how would this all work? By identifying and bringing together the committed and experienced teams who work across recognised and established services that interact with students; meaning the professional teams across a university but also the many services and teams outside of it. By coming together and adapting what they do they can provide an integrated and collaborative system that is more than the sum of its parts and that provides more bang for their buck!

They should coordinate, change, and streamline what they do to move beyond what is good for their own service and instead focus on what is right for the student. This, for the student, is what they want as it does not matter to them where a team is located or what service or company they work for. They want to know there is someone there when they reach out, a system of support that is easy to access and then navigate, which doesn’t pass them from pillar to post, one service to the next. They want the right level of support at the time they need it. They want obstacles that delay their onward journey removed.

Rather than the siloed services, that at best, work alongside each other, and at worst are totally unaware of each other, pumping more cash into more staff, more counsellors, more services and more levels of complexity, there can be a leaner group of people working together across their established teams with a shared purpose to provide the support required.

When services reach out, connect, integrate and collaborate then that is an indicator that we are in the right direction to develop an inclusive, value-for-money and high-performing student service offering. It is definitely not the easy option, and, for the teams involved, it takes a long-term commitment to take this new collaborative approach. But for the students, we are here to help for the sake of their academic success, and their reach for authenticity. Let’s start talking to each other. It is worth it.