Table of Contents
Overview
Today’s college students navigate a unique mix of academic pressure, social uncertainty, and digital overwhelm, and many are struggling in silence. In TimelyCare’s recent webinar, higher education leaders discussed how institutions can foster resilience, support mental health, and create a sense of belonging for a generation under stress. This article highlights key insights and actions that help students struggle well and stay enrolled, in their own words.
Redefining failure, resilience, and retention for a generation under pressure
College has always been challenging. But for many students today, normal setbacks such as a failed exam, a friendship fallout, or a breakup can feel like a breaking point rather than a turning point.
More than one-third of college students now report symptoms of anxiety or depression, according to the 2024-2025 Healthy Minds Study. When struggle feels like failure, belonging suffers. And when belonging suffers, retention is at risk.
In TimelyCare’s recent webinar, “GenZtressed – Struggle Well, Stay Well: Redefining Failure, Resilience, and Retention in College Life,” we explored how higher education leaders can meet this moment with both compassion and evidence.
The panel included:
- Hilary Burns, Higher Education Reporter, The Boston Globe (moderator)
- Dr. Bryant Ford, Director of CAPS, Brown University
- Heather Simonich, Assistant Dean of Students & Director, Center for Holistic Health, Concordia College
Their insights point to a simple but powerful shift. “Not all stress is bad stress,” Ford reminded us. “It allows students to be able to learn or thrive in environments.”
Students don’t need a world without struggle. They need campuses that help them struggle well and stay enrolled.
What’s changed about the student experience?
Today’s students live in a different emotional climate. Even if data shows slightly lower rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, the tone has shifted.
Simonich described what she’s seeing on her campus, “You definitely feel maybe a tone of kind of stress and overwhelm. And I would even say confusion.”
Ford sees that confusion, too, and who students are looking to for guidance. “I think they’re looking for the adults… to help them lead and or navigate these challenging times.”
In addition to their regular academic pressures, students must navigate:
- Political and social polarization
- Global conflicts that feel personal
- Shifting DEI priorities and uncertainty about belonging
- Pressure to succeed in an unstable world
These factors create a baseline of stress, confusion, and overwhelm. If students don’t know where to turn for help, they may disengage before reaching a crisis point.
Student affairs teams must pay attention to more than utilization metrics. Listening to students’ questions, silence, and emotional temperature is just as critical.
How to support belonging when DEI feels unstable
Many students, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, hear mixed messages. National headlines may undermine DEI, even as campuses promote inclusion.
Ford named it plainly:
“Some other things that folks may be struggling with is the erosion of diversity initiatives happening on campus… I think some students are struggling with universities’ ability to navigate what’s happening politically with diversity, while at the same time trying to affirm to students that we actually value these types of things.”
Simonich sees the tension in the classroom and beyond:
There’s “growing concerns and tension around… our marginalized populations on campus, and how to support them in having conversations about these very important topics at a time where there’s a deep sense of taboo or, you know, fear of being canceled or saying the wrong thing or disagreeing.”
Panelists emphasized the need to:
Name the disconnect
Acknowledge inconsistencies between rhetoric and reality.
Foster agency among students
Help students focus on where they do have control.
Ford often asks students where they “might have agency and how they might be able to exercise the agency on the college campus.”
Teach dialogue
Offer tools and spaces for respectful disagreement.
Programs like Concordia’s “Purple College” — an initiative that blends faculty training with student-led dialogue — and Brown’s structured dialogue initiatives show that these aren’t just soft skills. They’re infrastructure for belonging.
Silence and the fear of saying the wrong thing
Students report anxiety about speaking openly, especially around complex issues. This fear can lead to silence, which erodes connection and community.
Asked why students hesitate to share their views, Dr. Ford said, “I hear rejection. I often hear people say, ‘I don’t want to come across as making a mistake.’”
Simonich adds that many students “simply don’t know how to have these conversations in person, live,” especially when they’re used to processing conflict through posts, comments, and texts.
Ford underscored how much listening skills matter. “Listening is an art form, and I think that many people often don’t listen. They can hear, but they don’t listen.”
Student affairs professionals can support students by:
- Creating low-stakes spaces for practice
- Teaching reflective listening (“What did you hear this person say?”)
- Reinforcing that disagreement can happen without dehumanization
These skills build the foundation for stronger relationships both on campus and beyond.
Tech, social media, and AI: Support and struggle in digital spaces
Digital platforms are how students connect and cope, but also where they get stuck.
Social media drives comparison and perfectionism
Simonich’s counseling team took a closer look at phone and social media use because the pattern was impossible to ignore:
“We could count very few students who wouldn’t say they need to decrease the amount of time they spend on their phone… to the point where it interferes with our ability to function and feel well.”
Ford sees how curated feeds drive perfectionism:
Students “will look at other people’s pages and make comparisons about their lives knowing that these social media posts… might be curated in such a way that is showing a particular view or lens, and it may not necessarily be the totality of who a person is.”
This can reinforce feelings of inadequacy, especially for students already questioning their place.
Technology connects students to high-risk behaviors
Simonich’s team is increasingly concerned about what phones make easier:
“Some really difficult things like the sports betting and online pornography… certainly, those are topics that in the counseling center, we’re seeing bubble up in much greater numbers than we ever have historically.”
These issues often start early and are carried silently into college, affecting finances, relationships, and mental health.
AI: A support tool with limits
Students are also turning to AI, sometimes in surprisingly vulnerable ways.
Ford shared, “We’ve had clients come in and say, ‘Well, ChatGPT said I have this. What do you think?’”
Simonich described one student who used AI to reinforce a safety plan. “We recently had a client that said, ‘So I uploaded my safety plan to my AI bot, and I talk through it in times of need around suicide or to avoid cutting.’”
AI can be a bridge to self-advocacy, especially for students who are anxious about reaching out. But it can also mislabel symptoms, delay care, or offer guidance without context.
Institutions need open dialogue about healthy use, not blanket fear or blind endorsement.
Online relationships are real, but sometimes limiting
Ford is quick to point out that “introverted” students may be deeply connected online through gaming, chat servers, or interest-based communities. While those relationships can be valuable and supportive, for many students, for others, it can foster feelings of isolation.
The key, Ford noted, is understanding those relationship dynamics and whether they’re good for the student or not. “If they are creating this community and connection online, I really want to support that.”
The key is asking, “Is this helping or hindering the student’s growth?”
Support should recognize what’s working, not just what’s missing.
When overachievement becomes a liability
Many students equate worth with doing everything perfectly. On high-achieving campuses, this can backfire as students overcommit, hide imposter feelings, and/or burn out silently.
Ford sees the paradox firsthand at Brown:
“It’s often very, very hard or difficult to have students come to this campus and then tell them that they’re not supposed to work very hard because they’ve gotten into Brown, and it’s like, it just doesn’t compute.”
He describes students who are “overcommitted” and “don’t know how to say no to something,” even when their bandwidth is gone.
Simonich looks at it through a public health lens:
“At some point, you gotta learn where is the time and space to, like, make time for yourself, and that doesn’t mean you don’t work hard.”
Students often need help understanding and setting boundaries and practicing self-care. Support strategies include:
- Challenging all-or-nothing thinking
- Using motivational interviewing to help students recognize when a strategy that once worked has stopped working
- Normalizing recalibration and recovery, whether that means dropping a role, adjusting a course load, or taking a break to focus on health
These mindsets help students stay engaged and on track without sacrificing well-being.
Accommodations and equity: A new normal
Colleges are seeing a sharp rise in accommodation requests for mental health.
Simonich shared the numbers from her campus:
“In 2020, [our] small college served only 82 of our students, which was about 4%. And last year and this year, we’re at about 12%… that’s a really different world than it was three, four, five years ago even.”
And the top reason for accommodations may surprise some:
“The number one reason we’re serving students in disability services on our campus is for mental health disorders. Learning disorders are actually about the third or fourth reason.”
Ford sees the impact of earlier informal accommodations in K12: teachers who quietly extended deadlines or adjusted expectations for high-achieving students with unaddressed needs. College exposes gaps that were previously masked.
This shift reflects:
- Better K12 screening
- Lower stigma
- Expanded ADA protections
Accommodations aren’t shortcuts. They level the playing field and reflect real needs.
When asked about critics who worry students won’t survive without accommodations after graduation, Heather’s response was firm:
“Our job is to provide an education, and there will be HR, human resources departments that will have to manage that wherever they work… It’s a law.”
Higher ed’s role is to equip, not gatekeep.
What campuses can do right now
You can’t control everything, but you can take action. Panelists recommend:
Make mental health everyone’s job
Ford’s vision at Brown is clear:
“I wanted to reframe this in terms of mental health on campus is everybody’s job, everybody’s responsibility.”
That looks like:
- Integrating well-being into first-year programming and advising
- Training all departments, from housing to business offices, in trauma-informed, student-centered support
Create space for dialogue
Both campuses are investing in programs that teach listening and disagreement, like “Purple College” and multidisciplinary dialogue initiatives.
These spaces:
- Provide structure and safety in hard conversations
- Help students practice vulnerability and conflict with support
Build skills they will need in workplaces, communities, and civic life
Normalize struggle, don’t medicalize it
Ford offered an important caution as the conversation closed:
“I want to make sure that we are not pathologizing all stress… There are times where stress can be adaptive as opposed to maladaptive.”
Campuses can:
- Help students distinguish stress from crisis
- Reinforce that seeking help is a strength
Avoid sending the message that any discomfort automatically signals a disorder
Prioritize prevention
Simonich emphasized the need to pair reactive care with proactive promotion:
“We have to do better with health promotion and prevention, so we don’t have to spend so much time on the reactive, more expensive, heavier, more burden-type work.”
That means:
- Using data to identify students at risk
- Investing in outreach before issues escalate
- Partnering across the institution to share responsibility for well-being
Resilience reframed: Struggle as signal, not failure
Not all stress is bad. Ford reminds us that struggle can be information, not a diagnosis:
“When we hear, you know, Gen Z stressed, I just wanna make sure that we’re being thoughtful about how we’re framing the stress, and to know that not all stress is bad stress.”
Campuses can model that:
- Asking for help is strength
- Adjusting goals is growth
- Resilience includes knowing when to rest or shift
When students feel supported in their struggle, they’re more likely to stay enrolled and engaged.
Help Your Students Struggle Well and Stay
You don’t need all the answers. You need the right partners.
TimelyCare supports institutions with proven virtual mental health care that enhances student resilience, belonging, and retention.
Contact us to learn how we can help your campus thrive.
Key Takeaways
- Today’s students face chronic stress that affects retention
- DEI uncertainty and silence can erode belonging
- Overachievement and perfectionism put students at risk
- Accommodations are equity tools, not exceptions
FAQs
It’s the idea that students don’t need struggle to be eliminated. They need support to navigate it with resilience and clarity.
Better awareness, expanded ADA protections, and reduced stigma mean more students are seeking support, especially for anxiety and depression.
By providing timely, measurable mental health support, TimelyCare helps students stay enrolled and engaged through challenges, turning potential breaking points into turning points. Read more about a first-of-its-kind study that evaluated how a college or university’s partnership with TimelyCare impacts student retention.
