The darker side of university life

This month thousands of students have descended upon Canterbury. There is a popular view that student days are the happiest of young peoples’ lives. Sadly, this is not the case for too many of them. Most will have debt for the first time. They will also be away from their families and long-term friends.

In the night-time economy of the bars, pubs and restaurants of Canterbury they may give off the impression of indulging in collective fun with lots of friends without a care in the world. But the reality of a growing number of them is quite the opposite.

The statistics show loneliness, personal isolation and depression are on the increase among university students. It is particularly high at universities located in the large urban conurbations but it is also a growing problem in smaller towns and cities.

Loneliness is higher among young men than women. They are less likely to have social networks and deep friendships that offer emotional and social support.

So do our universities do enough to cope with this growing problem? While they award mega-buck salaries to their vice- chancellors, are they putting enough resources into student counselling services? At some universities students can wait up to six weeks to see a counsellor if they are suffering from acute anxiety or depression.

When universities make such a big thing of offering a great ‘ student experience’ and compete against each other to recruit students on this basis, don’t they have an obligation to put more money into counselling services?

Another aspect of the hidden world of university life is the frequency of student bullying and ostracism. How often are the words ‘weirdo’, ‘freak’ and ‘dumb-head’ used among students to describe classmates? Physical threats can also be more frequent than is assumed.

Many of these issues, sadly, can be related to the huge expansion of higher education over the past 30 years. In the past, the UK’S universities were rather small, based on the ‘Oxbridge’ model. Locally, there was a time when Canterbury Christ Church had about 700 students while Kent University was a ‘community’ of about 2,500.

Most universities had teaching systems based on seminars with small groups of students. Lecture classes were also small. Under these circumstances, it was difficult for students to be ‘lost’. If they had problems these would easily be picked up by lecturers.

The rapid growth of student numbers has destroyed this. Large lecture theatres and seminar classes, together with a measure of academic performance based almost solely on research output, has devalued the student role. They have become numbers in revenue streams rather than young people with personal as well as academic needs.

This means students are left to their own devices, to sort themselves out. Some would say this is good for them as a ‘growing up’ experience. That is as maybe, but that is no reason to create institutional frameworks that encourage personal unhappiness and acute depression.

Students are now treated as customers. So, isn’t it time the UK’S universities put more investment into meeting their customers’ personal needs?

As for those happy students we meet on the streets in Canterbury, bear in mind there are others – possibly as high as 10 to 15% – who are suffering from acute feelings of anxiety, depression and loneliness.