🎓 The 10 reasons Universities can’t solve the student mental health crisis.

This is part two of a two-part post. If you haven’t read part one then check it out first here.

👋 I hope whilst reading this something resonates, clashes or deepens your resolve to be causally responsible for reducing unresolved mental health and wellbeing issues within your university or organisation.

Here are 10 reasons Universities can’t solve the student mental health crisis.

1.Universities are too slow to react, whilst the problem is growing too fast. Too many levels, layers, email threads and non-decision makers are involved in decision making. Whilst academic year constraints and conflicting departmental goals distract focus and procrastinate change.

2. Universities don’t understand the problem, because they don’t collect the data. Most student mental health issues are unresolved, unknown to providers and remain hidden. There isn’t any data on the unknown and there isn’t even data on the known.

3. Though qualified academically, they aren’t experts in getting people to use products and services. It’s both a marketing problem and a resource problem.

4. Universities assume services are visible. Services, crisis helplines and community links are hidden within slow websites, dull interfaces and unsexy design. The path to support isn’t made easy this way.

5. Universities struggle to make something in-house students want. Yet, assume too quickly that the message got through, was read, understood and bookmarked for future use.

6. Universities aren’t early adopters of technology. They don’t want to waste resources on the wrong things and especially on the wrong things nobody else has used. Though experiencing the pain, it is after all the pain they know.

7. They know technology is the solution, but do not have the experience to implement. Uptake as low as 4% is normal for a new content-based service for universities. That's because staff aren’t growth marketers or product managers… and aren’t paid to know network effect when they see it.

8. Individuals aren’t given enough power to make a change. Like before, too many non-decision makers are involved in making decisions and little trust is given to frontline staff.

9. Typical large org bureaucracy, groupthink and poor comms. This exposes universities to follow hype and bubbles because it looks good and feels low-risk at the time.

And lastly, the most important point of all…

10. None of this is the fault of individuals. It is the product of the environment and institution Universities exist within. Program managers, lecturers, advisors and support staff are already overwhelmed with everything else they have to do. Universities are big because they have to be big to survive, to educate and to further critical research. These challenges thwart most large orgs from getting ahead of a threat, but they persist in universities due to different pressures which motivate different actions.

I can’t state the last point enough; This isn’t their fault. No university employee intends for any of these problems to exist.

This isn’t their fault.

But it is their responsibility to fix it and it remains in their power to do so.

Thanks for reading, feel free to reach out to Toby here.