Some Sobering Statistics

In a podcast for Teaching in Higher Ed, Stephen Brookfield (2016) comments, “College students of any age should be treated as adults.” While I laud this statement, I would make a slight, but, I think, important revision. College students of any age are adults. They might not have had much practice at it, depending on what age they are, but they are indeed adults. Many of them have or are experiencing the beginnings of adult problems and responsibilities. Consider the following:

• The Center for Law and Social Policy in the “Children, Young Adults Stuck in Poverty: Census Data Show Millions Left Behind, September 2018 reports, “The poverty rate for children remains the highest for all age groups at about one in six children (17.5 percent), with no change from 2016, and significantly contrasting with major progress from 2014 to 2016. For young adults, ages 18-24, the poverty rate also remained flat at 16.1 percent after a steep decrease in the previous two years and remains higher than average poverty rates for all. The profound consequences of poverty, especially for young children, are well documented and include negative outcomes during childhood and in education, employment, and earnings into adulthood.”
• According to the 2021 HOPE Center Survey “Basic Needs Insecurity during the Ongoing Pandemic,” “Among survey respondents at two-year colleges, 38% experienced food insecurity in the 30 days prior to the survey, with just over 16% experiencing low food security and a little more than 22% experiencing very low food security […] At four-year colleges, 29% of students reported experiencing food insecurity.” It also reports,” These patterns are consistent with another national survey conducted in November 2020, which found that approximately three in 10 college students missed a meal at least once per week since the start of the pandemic.”
• According to the 2019–20 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study that looks at the “First Look at the Impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic on Undergraduate Student Enrollment, Housing, and Finances,” “Students who identified as genderqueer, gender nonconforming, or a different identity had difficulty finding safe and stable housing at three times the rates (9 percent) of students who identified as male or female (3 percent each).” Also, “Black students, Hispanic or Latino students, American Indian or Alaska Native students, and students of two or more races had difficulty accessing food or paying for food at higher rates (10 to 14 percent) than either White or Asian students (7 percent).”
• According to the 2022 “College Enrollment and Work Activity of Recent High School and College Graduates” from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 42.4 percent of full-time college students and 81% of part-time college students are employed. 44 percent of students at four-year colleges and 55.5 percent of students at two-year schools are employed.
• According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research 2014 “4.8 Million College Students Are Raising Children” report, “Approximately 2.1 million student parents attend 2-year institutions, representing 30 percent of the entire community college student body. An additional 1.1 million student parents attend four-year institutions (public and private not-for-profit), representing 15 percent of the total four-year undergraduate student body.”
• According to the National Center for Learning Disabilities 2017 “The State of Learning Disabilities: Understanding the 1 in 5” report, “Learning and attention issues are more common than many people think, affecting 1 in 5 children.” They also report that “[s]uccess in college and the workplace is heavily influenced by internal resilience factors such as temperament and self-perception. Low self-esteem and stigma help explain why young adults with learning disabilities—who are as smart as their peers—enroll in four-year colleges at half the rate of all young adults. Lack of self-advocacy and self-regulation skills may explain why students with learning disabilities who attend any type of postsecondary school are less likely to graduate than students without disabilities.”
• According to the American College Health Association National College Health Assessment Fall 2022 Executive Summary, 33.9% of university students surveyed had been diagnosed with anxiety (60.1 of trans/gender non-conforming respondants), 26.3% reported being diagnosed with depression (55.4% of trans/gender non-conforming respondants), and 30.4% had a positive suicide screening (65.2% of trans/gender non-conforming respondants).

There are endless statistics I could provide, but these alone illustrate that a majority of students have serious adult concerns: parenthood, poverty level, and employment, among others. For students with disabilities or mental health issues, they are constantly facing the challenge of deciding for themselves for the first time whether to request services. Veterans are returning from the military’s high-responsibility, high-anxiety life, perhaps with some form of disability, to (re)enter the classroom. As a side note, it is also possible for veterans to go from deployment to the classroom within as little as three days. Those students who do not fit any of the above markers are still struggling with learning how to become an adult, how to negotiate new freedoms and identities. I especially like how Ronald Barnett in A Will to Learn (2007, p. 2) looks at the experience of college students as “a project that calls for considerable effort and even anxiety on their parts, and it is a project where success cannot be assured…Just how is it that students keep going?” He echoes my own awe of students who continue to show up in spite of potential and often multiple challenges. Our job is to move them from “showing up” to “investing,” to the point that they become immersed in their learning and embrace a liberal education.

Making Choices

More than adults, students are people – with the concerns, the emotional tangles, and the physical realities that any person may have. I think we can all agree that we struggle to teach when, for example, our child is sick, we have been up all night working, we’re not sure if we’ll have enough money to eat that week (which, unfortunately, is all too common among adjunct faculty, in particular), or we have a physical or mental health issue. The 2013 “Higher Stress: A Survey of Stress and Well-Being Among Staff in Higher Education” (p. 34) by the University and College Union in the United Kingdom concludes that stress is a major cause for concern in higher education settings. Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber note in The Slow Professor (2016, p. 6) that “faculty stress directly affects student learning. We know from experience that when we walk into a classroom breathless, rushed, and preoccupied, the class doesn’t go well; we struggle to make connections with the material and our students.” It is just as difficult – arguably, perhaps more so given the type of cognitive activity – for students to “do their job,” to learn, under such circumstances in their own lives. Judy Willis (2006, p. 58) provides the science that the brain cannot learn and process information effectively, especially in terms of remembering, when it is dealing with stress. Despite books such as the humorously-titled Professors Are from Mars®, Students Are from Snickers® (which actually is a useful book on how to break down barriers between instructors and students with humor), we have far more in common than we usually admit.

At the same time as we need to acknowledge our commonalities with students, we do need to be aware of critical differences. In general, we don’t teach students like us. We must remember that we chose to spend several years immersed in a specific discipline, probably because we had investment in it (either naturally or awakened later) as well as affinity for it (either naturally or developed). We have spent a great deal of time with our subjects, and we’re passionate about them. We’re also, at this point, experts, and it’s likely we have forgotten what it means to be a beginner. I mentioned the “expert blind spot” that Susan A. Ambrose, etc., identify in How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles to Smart Teaching (2010, p. 99). If we acknowledge that we think differently than our students and yet we have common human needs and experiences, we can be more empathetic to them.

Thinking of students as people and adults can change how we perceive their requirements of education. Chet Meyers and Thomas Jones (1993, pp. 7-8) tell us rightly that adults “do not suffer fools gladly.” When a student does not complete readings or assignments or demonstrates apathy at having to take a course outside their major, there is every possibility they chose not to do so because they simply do not see the worth of the work. Consciously or unconsciously, they may be choosing not to waste their time on it.

The Space and Ability to Invest

Faith Kurtyka (2013) comments that “students [should] have a role in the university and an ethos that means that they can ask for something from their education […] have the power to shape their educational experiences as opposed to feeling like victims to whatever the university or their instructors want to do.” Let’s focus on the words “ethos,” “power,” and “victims.”

“Victims” first. Consider some more statistics:

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention find that “almost two-thirds of surveyed adults report at least one ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences, such as emotional, physical, or sexual abuse), and more than one in five reported three or more ACEs,” which various studies associate with having “lasting effects on…graduation rates [and] academic achievement.”
• The 2021 Annual Report of the Center for Collegiate Mental Health concludes that “ Stress and Academic Performance showed increases in 2020-2021” and “Eating Concerns and Family Distress slightly increased.”
• According to Bruce Sharkin (2006, pp. 4-5), “In a survey conducted by the American College Health Association (as cited in Voelker, 2003), a high percentage of students reported feeling hopeless and depressed to the point where they could barely function.”
• According to Barredo, et al., in  “Stress and Stressors: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Students, Faculty and Staff at a Historically Black College/University” (2023, p. 279), “Inequities about the impact of COVID-19 among racial groups have been widely reported in the United States and they show that minorities and people of color are more adversely and disproportionately affected than their White counterparts.”
• According to the Victims of Crime “2015 NCVRW Resource Guide” on school and campus crime, “Of youth ages 12 to 18 in 2012, 52.4 per 1,000 students were victimized at school: 28.8 per 1,000 students experienced some form of violent victimization, with 3.4 per 1,000 students experiencing serious violent victimization.” Also, “Twenty-eight percent of students age 12 to 18 in 2011 reported being bullied at school during the school year.” More so, “In a 2011 study that included youth in grades 6 through 12, 64 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) respondents said they felt unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation, and 44 percent felt unsafe because of their gender expression” while “[e]ighty-two percent of LGBTQ youth respondents in 2011 had been verbally harassed at school because of their sexual orientation, 38.3 percent had been physically harassed (e.g., pushed or shoved), and 18.3 percent had been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation.” On college campuses, “[i]n 2012, 88,444 crimes were reported.” The data does not get separated out, but, “[o]f the hate and bias crimes reported on school and college campuses in 2012, 52.0 percent were hate crimes based on race, 20.3 percent were hate crimes based on sexual orientation, 16.8 percent were hate crimes based on religion, 10.1 percent were hate crimes based on ethnicity, and 0.8 percent were hate crimes based on disability.”
• The National Sexual Violence Resource Center reports that “[o]ne in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives” and “[o]ne in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before they turn 18 years old.” Additionally, “[o]ne in 5 women and one in 16 men are sexually assaulted while in college” and “[m]ore than 90% of sexual assault victims on college campuses do not report the assault.”
• According to Z Nicolazzo in Trans* in College (2017), “Studies now indicate that 50% or more of trans* people will experience intimate partner or sexual violence in their lifetimes (Calton, Cattaneo, & Gebhard, 2015; Marine in press-b) and that trans* college students at the undergraduate and graduate levels face more victimization than cisgender men or women (Cantor et al., 2015; New, 2015)…[A]lmost 60% of trans* undergraduates, and a little more than 60% of trans* graduate students, felt a report of sexual violence would not be taken seriously by campus administrators.”

These numbers are staggering, even more so when considering what the people sitting in front of us in our classes have experienced, are experiencing, or will experience. Essentially, as difficult of a subject as it is to consider, many of our students are intimately aware of what feeling like a victim means. To recreate that scenario in their educational experiences, even unintentionally, reinforces the image that learning is, at best, a burden and, at worst, abuse.

Given these statistics, it is fair to extrapolate that many of our students have experienced powerlessness in one form or another, either short- or long-term, quite often at the hands of people in authority or people who should have had their best interests at heart. Many were not allowed to question their environment, which, if we think about it, is often true in college as well – not from nefarious intentions, but simply logistics in most cases. Registrars pick the rooms for classes, departments pick times and credits, governing bodies pick what are required courses. Many students before they reach us were not allowed to question the rules made for them. Again, this is often the case in traditional college classes – we set the rules, choose the readings, set the assignments. Even for individuals who have not experienced abuse, college is the first time they have chosen to be in a classroom. Or maybe not – maybe their families required them to enroll. “Power” has not exactly been a standard in their lives before we meet them.

That leaves us with “ethos,” specifically, continuing with Kurtyka, “an ethos that means that they can ask for something from their education.” This returns to the “students are people too” mantra, but it cannot be overstated. If we want our students to question, to be involved with their own learning, then we have to embrace questions of all kinds, even ones we don’t like. We have to listen to them when they ask to be a part of their education. We have to enable them to exercise the power to affect their experiences. We have to create the environment that will allow them the space and the ability to invest.

Not going to lie. This is not easy.

For one, there is the perception that increasing the power of students in the classroom entails giving up some of our own. For some, it can be difficult to give over this power. I have never really bought into this belief. Is there a finite amount of power to go around that means only so much percentage for the students and for the instructor? Yes, I understand that engaging in learner-centered teaching and active learning is to transfer power to students. And the whole point of learner-centered teaching is to put control over learning into the hands of the student. But control in the hands of students does not mean that an instructor has no control. Inviting students into the process of learning does not diminish the role of the instructor. Instead, it amplifies it because being “guide on the side” can take more effort and energy than being a “sage on the stage.”

Which leads to a second point: time. Preparing a classroom experience about course content, delivering that experience, and testing students on that experience takes a great deal of time. Engaging students in what it means to learn, how to learn, and investing in learning takes time. On top of time spent preparing students for active learning, guiding them through it, assessing it, thinking about how to redesign, etc. – then starting over again. Certainly, as Berg and Seeber (2016, p. 7) point out, “many situations identified as sources of work stress are about lack of time,” which I would argue is true of students as well. It is a commitment, but certainly one that yields dividends in student learning, which may, in the end, counteract any stress by increasing pleasure in what we do, and, it is important to remember that Berg and Seeber (p. 34) find “pleasure – experienced by the instructor and the students – is the most important predictor of ‘learning outcomes’.” This qualitative statement is supported by science. Judy Willis (2006, p. 58) reports that it has been found in “neuroimaging studies of the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the rest of the limbic system and through measurement of dopamine and other brain chemical transmitters, students’ comfort level [such as self-confidence, trust and positive feelings for teachers, and supportive classroom and school communities] has a critical impact on information transmission and storage in the brain.” In short, pleasure good, stress bad.

There is also a burden of care. If we recognize that every student has different reasons for investing or not and if we accept that any of the statistics listed above (and the many more not discussed here) can have a profound effect on a student’s ability and/or willingness to invest, then there is quite a bit of an onus upon us to consider how to reach as many students as possible each time we step into a classroom. Depending on our own experiences and background, this awareness can take its toll, which is often termed “burnout.” Thomas M. Skovholt and Michelle Troter-Mathison (2016, pp. 108-109) delineate between meaning burnout and caring burnout. The former refers to the point when the work of helping others no longer provides any meaning to the individual. The latter is the inability to reattach and create relationships due to being too depleted. Skovholt and Troter-Mathison use a battery analogy that, when it’s “drained enough, there is no spark, no life.” In more extreme cases, burnout may become “compassion fatigue,” which is, as Beverly Diane Kyer (2016, p. 39) defines it, “a syndrome which consists of various symptoms that mirror post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and is the suffering and secondary trauma experienced by a caregiver or service worker who deals with people who are the victims of trauma.” The stress of university faculty was high even before COVID, and there has not been enough adequate studies to quantify what that stress looks like post-pandemic. There are strategies to prevent or remedy burnout or compassion fatigue, particularly self-care practices, but these depend on the individual and even access to these practices. Hopefully, a return on student learning can at the least lighten this burden.

We’re in This Together

Derek Black, the son of Stormfront founder Don Black and the godson of David Duke, disavowed his white supremacist upbringing after attending a liberal arts college. As he remembers (2016):

Several years ago, I began attending a liberal college where my presence prompted huge controversy. Through many talks with devoted and diverse people there — people who chose to invite me into their dorms and conversations rather than ostracize me — I began to realize the damage I had done.

Paul Corrigan, professor at Southeastern University, posted on his blog thoughts from a graduating student, Emilee Rosell, who tells a moving story about her own educational experience (2016):

Now, at the very end of my college career, I recognize that I have often brought some amount of resistance into courses such as these—the ones that seek most to change and enrich lives…But what I found most threatening about “liberal” ideas was not the fear of being politically misled. Instead, what I resisted so deeply was this transformation of mind and heart. It involves an abolition of the old as well as a beautiful creation of the new, and this was a risk I did not want to take. Indeed, I never expected to find myself as transformed and changed as I am today. And it was sometimes just as agonizing, frightening, and painful as I imagined. But every heartache and every joy that comes with caring more deeply and thinking more profoundly has been worth the cost.

You might argue: these are exceptional cases! And, certainly, in the case of Black, that would be true. But, exceptional or not, what they illustrate is that our students can come to us with all forms of resistance. For Black and Rosell, their upbringing and backgrounds affected how they approached learning. We have plenty of studies that indicate other reasons for resistance, including previous educational experiences and fixed mindsets. For students who grow up in working-class families, there is a strong emphasis on getting a college degree in order to get a job, which sometimes creates a resistance to any course that does not appear to have a direct influence on this goal. All in all, whether they seem logical to us or not, there are many reasons why a student may be resistant to what we teach.

That resistance can take a number of forms. Questioning is certainly one of them. “Why do I have to take this course?” “Why do I have to do this assignment?” “Why does it matter whether we do this or not?” These may or may not be asked with a belligerent tone – in fact, they may or may not be asked at all – but they can make us feel defensive. Michael Linsin, in his post “How to Handle Students Who Question Your Methods” (2016), cautions against that defensiveness, stressing that classrooms are “most effective when students buy-in” and “when they believe you have their best interest at heart and appreciate what it’s like being in their shoes.” He’s talking about K-12 classrooms here, but I argue that the idea is even more valid when teaching adults. It has certainly been my experience, and is supported by P. Sven Arvidson and Therese A. Huston (2008, p. 13 ), that, when an instructor is respectful, students respond in kind. The opposite is also true.

As A.J. Juliani, in Learning By Choice: 10 Ways Choice and Differentiation Create An Engaged Learning Experience for Every Student (2014, p 5), reminds us, “We typically tell students what they have to read and learn, then lead them through teacher created activities, and finally test them traditionally on what they understand. There is no chance of falling into such a deep state of learning that they would forget their lunch!” Getting a college student to forget their lunch is rather an ambitious goal! I try for something more attainable by instilling investment. I would be naïve if I claimed that we can reach every student, address every concern, and pre-empt every form of resistance, but thinking about and implementing strategies that speak to investment can certainly help to overcome the resistance or apathy we might sense in our students in our general education courses. Even the act of offering students the opportunity to invest can spur a willingness to engage in their own learning. As James Lang remarks in Small Teaching (2016, pp. 174-5), “If we can help create that sense of purpose in our students and can ensure that their purpose aligns with what we want them to learn, we are likely to heighten their attention and cognitive capacities in our courses and to turn their minds in productive directions.”

Michael Gundlach (2016), in an article with a title that I promise did not influence my mantra, “Students are People, Too: Supporting Students Academically and Personally,” dubs students “fellow Spartans.” Such an outlook eliminates the “us vs. them” attitude that sadly is prevalent in higher education. I would advocate replacing that attitude with a “we’re in this together” attitude, which is far more encouraging for students to engage in the kind of work necessary for deep, significant learning.