College students are increasingly willing to talk about their mental health and wellbeing — but the adults in their world don’t always know what to do with that willingness. How can a college community better help students build relationships, recover from failure, take risks, and develop the skills to flourish long after graduation? 

Those questions are at the heart of the newly published “The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being in Higher Education,” co-edited at Purdue University by Beth McCuskey, the vice provost for student life, and Louis Tay, the William C. Byham Chair in Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Drawing on the work of more than 120 researchers and practitioners around the world, the handbook looks at wellbeing across the higher-ed ecosystem. LearningWell spoke with McCuskey and Tay just before the release of the handbook to discuss what today’s students need most and why wellbeing belongs at the center of a university education.

LW: What was the motivation for creating the handbook? What need is it filling in the higher education landscape, and why now?

LT: A big part of the motivation is to recognize that higher education institutions do not merely have the responsibility of educating students in terms of passing down knowledge and skills but also imparting skills for wellbeing and character development. This has, I think, been a classical way of really viewing education in the first place — it’s really the whole person. Also it answers the call for the Okanagan Charter, where really the focus has been on making sure that health and wellbeing are central. There really hasn’t been a resource that consolidates all that we know in terms of research and also practice. So we felt like this was really timely and important to do.

BM: At Purdue, like a lot of campuses for probably a good 10 years ago now, we initially tried to solve the problem by ramping up our mental health services staff on campus. But it became crystal clear that we needed to look beyond that. It really became a campus-wide initiative to look at wellbeing more holistically.

In student life, which I oversee, we were asking, how do we build our services holistically so that we’re meeting a student where they are? Everybody has concerns or problems from time to time. Not every single concern or problem needs a therapeutic mental health intervention, but a student may need somebody to talk to. Maybe it’s study-skill development or something like that that’s underpinning the need.

We built out a programmatic model called Steps to Leaps, playing off the Neil Armstrong alumni connection to campus. It focuses on five areas: overall wellbeing, leadership development, impact, networks, and grit. Louis started working with Steps to Leaps from that research angle. He helped us think through things from that lens. Post-pandemic, he suggested maybe we should write something because I’m practitioner-based, he’s research-based, and so we can approach this from both angles. He had done some work with Oxford University Press before, so he had an editorial contact. About four years ago we pitched the concept, and it fit very neatly in their handbook model. 

LW: The handbook has an ambitious scope, with more than 120 contributors and 46 chapters. How did you decide what — and whom — to include?

BM: We started off with the backdrop of overall mental health and current issues and trends. There’s also a public-health approach to student development, and we talk about staff wellbeing, faculty wellbeing, and contingent faculty wellbeing. Then we look at integration and synthesis: How do we take the theories, the different research in different spaces, and apply it in the higher-ed setting? This includes everything from Covid impact to stress and coping, friendships and wellbeing.

Then we get into interventions and programs — programs that people have launched and research or outcomes for those. And then policy and program implementation: How have different campuses done this work? There’s an example of a first-year program, basic-needs work, the Okanagan Charter, and social-emotional wellbeing through campus housing. Then we have inclusive approaches and disciplinary and global perspectives. So it’s pretty broad.

LT: There are lots of different institutions that are doing amazing work here, and Beth and I are only doing a small slice. I think it’s really important to gather ideas and learn from the best. The fun part of being editors is we really get to read everything and learn from everyone. And of course we exchange ideas as well through that process.

LW: How does the handbook handle wellbeing, and is there such a thing as a baseline? What does “wellbeing” mean in this context?

BM: We’re defining wellbeing very basically. It is flourishing — human flourishing, helping people be their best. It’s broader than supporting the students because if our base is not well, we’re asking a lot of people to make things as well as possible for others. We’ve got to look at this as an ecosystem, and I think that’s what the book does. 

LW: How would you characterize where students are now compared with 10 years ago? What are some of the features of their state of wellbeing?

BM: We're in a very different place, and I think we're starting to see things evolving generationally. One of the key things we’ve been noticing is that over the past decade, more students are coming in presenting challenges related to wellbeing. Surveys show that more students have anxiety and depression, and fewer of them are flourishing.

Also starting about 10 or 12 years ago, we were seeing a whole shift in how students were approaching their education. We had seen students prior to that who wanted to experience a lot of different elements, maybe changing their major a lot, maybe even overcommitting — getting involved a lot of different places. About the mid-teens, we saw this huge commitment of students to, “This is the goal” — very goal-specific and ladder-like in their approach to how they were going to accomplish that goal, which was a very different mindset.

I think the pandemic did absolutely cause some concerns. We had the learning loss, and I believe the social learning loss. If you’re managing a residence hall, for example, you see this. People can’t have a conversation about dirty socks on the floor. How do you help people have those skills to address conflict, even tiny conflicts? That generation that came to campus right after the pandemic may have lost that skill-building in high school because of learning remotely. And then there’s the technology piece. The door is wide open here in terms of where this is going.

LT: They are digital natives, so a lot of interactions nowadays are filtered or mediated through technology. It’s not merely that most people are messaging rather than calling. Now we have A.I. in the mix, too. Youth are forming relationships with A.I. agents, and there are big companies actually working on that to address loneliness. But then it comes at a cost. Are young folks actually interacting with these A.I. agents and learning unhealthy patterns because it’s a frictionless relationship where you have zero obligation to the “person?”

At the same time, we know that social relationships are foundational for wellbeing. I think one of the significant challenges for a lot of students coming into college is being able to socialize well and relate to others and even tolerate disagreement.

A lot of students are aware and very authentic about where they’re at. They are very open to receiving help and receiving guidance. They come in with a lot of strengths. They also come in with some significant challenges because of how our world is.

LW: How does the handbook suggest colleges could think beyond counseling centers when they consider student wellbeing?

BM: Holistically, psychological services are an important element in how we support wellbeing, but there are a lot of other spaces, too. How is a campus a community? How do people find their people in that community? How do people get supported in that community? That is a huge part of the work, I believe.

LT: There is a critical need not only at Purdue but across different higher education institutions at different levels. A lot of students are coming in with significant needs. Often the ratio of a provider to the number of students is quite skewed. A lot of universities are struggling to find alternatives — peer support and now even A.I. support as almost a first response to help. I think we need to be very creative in those ways to really meet this growing need and demand and, at the same time, harness students’ own willingness to talk about these things.

"I don’t think we should see students merely as recipients but also as a wonderful resource to be able to help their fellow students."

There are other types of formats where they’re coming together, and it’s not merely one-on-one. Again, one-on-one will never go away, but there are other ways that students can feel supported if they come as a group and support one another. There is research showing that those who are actually in the position to help others, fascinatingly, also grow more and are more resilient and have greater wellbeing. I don’t think we should see students merely as recipients but also as a wonderful resource to be able to help their fellow students.

LW: Resilience and learning from failure are recurring ideas in the handbook. Are institutions — or adults generally — doing enough to help students develop those skills?

BM: This is one of the elements of Steps to Leaps: helping students recognize that everybody fails. The most successful among us have failed. It’s much more about what you do when you fail. Not that you shouldn’t be sad or angry — that’s all normal. But how do you pick up from that? What do you incorporate in your own toolkit based on that failure?

Along with the failure element is this whole idea of a linear journey —helping students see that journeys are never linear. We can have the greatest intentions to make them so, and then life happens.

Sometimes alumni stories can be so incredibly powerful for students because they’re looking for their mentors and heroes. It’s so important that they hear somebody they’ve been admiring say, “Here’s how I screwed up this class,” or “Here’s what happened in my first job and what I learned from that that helped me be successful in my second.” Normalizing is a big part of it. And higher ed is such a great place for students to learn those skills because it’s a relatively safe place to fall on your face. There are lots of resources there to help you. We’re all works in progress, and our students are absolutely works in progress.

The worst thing we could do is encourage people never to take a risk. When you take risks — even calculated, educated, well-thought-out risks — sometimes it still doesn’t work. Nobody likes to fail, but you want to make sure there’s that learning piece. The looking back is sometimes the more profound learning.

LW: What do adults misunderstand about the wellbeing concerns young people express today?

LT: There is a lot of willingness among students to seek and receive help, and a lot of desire to talk about wellbeing. I think that can often be misconstrued as students having less ambition or being too privileged. But I think that it’s a healthy pushback against what we’re doing as a society, which is this relentless pursuit of success and more. The question is: Is that really the end goal of life? Just to have more money, more status? We see that on campus here and also in the themes in our book, as researchers and practitioners are noticing it as well. I think that’s something that would be helpful for adults to recognize and perhaps have a shift in how they think about these conversations.

BM: We're all we're works in progress, and we appreciate that our students are absolutely works in progress. How do we help them make the most of this environment and the resources in it as they're experimenting? So much is grounded in having that social network. You know the people that have your back, who will hand you tissues as you're sobbing, the people who can help you think through a problem. But a network isn't just something you take from — you are giving to your network, and that's partly why that's so strong. A big part of what we're trying to expand is how do you build these skills and mindset, and we know employers want those skills in our students.

LW: You had contributors from around the world. How did the global perspective influence your thinking about wellbeing?

BM: We know that different cultures experience things differently, but sometimes we can be so U.S.-centric in how we approach things. In our society, we tend to be more “me” focused, so here wellbeing is about me. I think in some cultures it’s about “we”— looking more at the collective mindset than the individual mindset. Having that written out helps put on the table that there are other approaches in the world. The context of wellbeing in Singapore, for example, is going to be very different than it is in the States, so we're defining wellbeing very basically as flourishing, human flourishing. Helping people be their best, culture to culture, means different things, and we have to acknowledge that, too.

LT: I had thought that a lot of what we are talking about with wellbeing was perhaps a much more Western issue. However, reading some of these chapters from other countries made me realize that this is not just an issue in North America, but a global one. Somehow, all around the world, faculty and staff and students are experiencing significant challenges, and it’s something that we all need to confront.

At the same time, there are cultural differences, too. The approach to thinking about wellbeing here might be slightly different. There’s an increasing level of destigmatization, whereas in places like East Asia, it’s still very much stigmatized to seek mental health help. It’s a global phenomenon, and addressing it requires a much more culturally sensitive approach to helping students.

LW: Was there anything that surprised you as the handbook came together?

BM: I found the lens of the different disciplines interesting as you start unpacking it: how social science might take on certain things, versus someone approaching this from a public health lens, versus a practitioner running a housing organization on campus. Each one of these elements is a source of truth for the problem at large. It’s how we honor where people are in those processes and help facilitate that whole. If we’re talking about human flourishing, the book showed us that there’s still a lot of work to do to help people be their best.

LW: How do you envision the handbook being used, and by whom?

BM: We’re looking at this as multi-use. It can absolutely support the faculty side of things. The research can be used as a textbook in certain settings. But there are also practical application components to it, so we see colleagues in areas like mine deploying these ideas and having it as a resource. If I’m wanting to look at how I improve in this space, the handbook gives some good tips about how to look at what your needs are and how to build out a collaborative model. If I’m looking at it from my lens as the senior student affairs officer, I might use the book differently. If I’m a researcher, I may use the research elements as good places to get information about who’s doing what in this space. We would like to do some sort of a symposium, a place to convene and have a good dialogue on these topics with others.

LW: Was the handbook intended to be updated in future editions?

BM: Louis and I haven’t even talked about that yet! Just the A.I. influence alone — our book does not tackle A.I. one iota because we started four years ago. This last year has been the whole copy-editing process, and in just that time things continued to evolve quickly. From the mental health side of things, I think we're still learning about A.I. in that space. Social media is one of the elements, and it's not all bad, though sometimes people hang their hat on that. I suspect A.I. will be very similar, where there's going to be parts that cause problems in the wellbeing space, and there will be parts that that support wellbeing growth and development. It's just how we deploy it. Louis has a grant that's doing some of that work right now. So absolutely, I think there’s an opportunity to take this and run with it.