Willord Simmons is a student affairs professional whose career spans a range of institutions and functional areas. He is currently the project manager for student engagement at the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, where he oversees high-impact programs that support students exploring careers and interests in local government. At the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he is the lead teaching fellow for courses on college student development theory and student affairs practice. He is also a Ph.D. student in higher education at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where his research interests focus on student development, student success, and the multifaceted impacts of college on learners. 

As college students prepare to leave their institutions and brave the world, many are eager to sport their newly minted degrees after time spent engaging in self-exploration, discovery, and development. However, those who unknowingly attach themselves to their college success may spend subsequent years untethering their worth from the diploma hanging on their wall. Data suggest gay men may fall victim to this trend most and may be left alone to navigate the mental health fallout, which goes unnoticed by institutions focused on rewarding their high performance capabilities. Our colleges and universities should better understand their role in perpetuating this potentially harmful achievement cycle among high achieving, developing students. 

In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Joel Mittleman, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, explains that gay students in 2022 earned a bachelor’s degree at sixteen percentage points above the overall national average. While interesting in isolation, this achievement gap only widens when further analyzing the success rate of gay men in comparison to their straight counterparts. Mittleman reveals that gay men were 44% more likely to be degree recipients than straight men and 50% more likely to earn their doctorate degrees. This level of success is notable. Some may even find it inspirational. However, the reason behind such success must also be questioned. 

The development of gay men has been examined in recent years to make meaning of their orientation toward high achievement. In his 2012 book, The Velvet Rage, Dr. Alan Downs explores how gay men overcompensate to combat homophobia and the stereotypically masculine roles they often do not see themselves in. He found that gay men aim high in their career and life pursuits, as they develop into adults. Even earlier on, they often achieve greatly in their academic performance. Further supporting this compensational achievement notion, the “best little boy in the world” hypothesis initially surfaced in a seminal 1973 text of the same title by Andrew Tobias. In it, he recounts the method of deflecting attention by acting according to the norms he knew would be celebrated. By doing so, he would maintain his closeted queerness and collect accolades along the way.

Theorists and psychologists, like Downs and Tobias, bring forth an understanding of how gay men utilize their outperformance as a source of esteem they otherwise may not feel while being authentically themselves. Thus, the tie between achievement and oneself grows strong, especially the longer the men are closeted. Particularly for college students who are already navigating the tumultuous tides of identity development, the internalization of external pressures brought on by societal norms may result in added stress. Furthermore, these overcompensation strategies fueling academic pressure may only be exacerbating the already disproportionate levels of mental health challenges gay men report.

Key findings from the 2021 Proud & Thriving Project—a collaboration between the Jed Foundation and the Consortium of Higher Ed LGBT Resource Professionals— show that LGBTQ+ students experience higher levels of stress, loneliness, isolation, and hopelessness as compared to their heterosexual peers. These statistics are further substantiated in a study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law in collaboration with the Point Foundation, the nation’s largest LGBTQ scholarship fund. The results from the study reveal that fewer LGBTQ people experienced a sense of belonging in college compared to non-LGBTQ people and were over three times as likely to report that their mental health was not good most of the time, if at all, while in college. The mental health challenges of the LGBTQ+ population are not relegated to the college years, however. They are seen spanning the course of one’s lifetime. In 2018, the American Psychiatric Associationreported that LGBTQ individuals were more than twice as likely to have a mental health disorder than heterosexual men and women in their lifetime. More specifically, gay men were observed as experiencing adverse mental health outcomes, including mood disorders, substance use, and suicide, more frequently than heterosexual men. 

Perfectionistic ideals that gay men already face because of a society that does not always accept them are reinforced in the college environment, where GPAs and degree completion are prioritized.

In concert, academic success rates, mental health data, and developmental theories paint a picture of the gay college student experience, a picture that, while still colorful, may look more muted in pigment. Perfectionistic ideals that gay men already face because of a society that does not always accept them are reinforced in the college environment, where GPAs and degree completion are prioritized. Though it is apparent that they are well-equipped to meet the academic expectations set before them, they must also harbor a great deal of resilience in the face of isolation, stress, and anxiety. With little to no acknowledgment of what may be lying beneath the shiny surface of good grades, student organization participation, and campus leadership, gay students are rewarded for their academic prowess and left to pick up the pieces of their strained mental health in the aftermath. Holistically speaking, this emotional labor presents an inequitable barrier to truly embracing both achievement and identity. This phenomenon is not the plight of gay men alone. Students from various marginalized backgrounds face similar pressures in different ways as they, too, strive for academic success.  

Higher education institutions have made progress in expanding their resources for LGBTQ+ students. Though being called into question more recently, these supports have provided visibility and community on campuses across the United States. While these spaces have served as bastions of acceptance, they simply are not enough to account for the unique mental health challenges that today’s college students face and the sustained impact of higher education. More attention must be given to high-performing students who may struggle to process their identity development separate from their achievements. While challenging, it is important for institutions to consider what tools, strategies, and mechanisms they have to support students who may not otherwise display signs of distress. 

The induced achievement pressures that gay college students experience make their academic success a double-edged sword—both impressive and troubling. It also reveals an opportunity for reframing. How academic success is both defined and rewarded should be rethought. In doing so, institutions must make certain that they are not reinforcing the harmful perfectionist ideals that disproportionately affect marginalized groups. We should ask ourselves how we can support the healthy development of students while preparing them for what comes next so that they thrive while on our campuses and long after.