Mental Health in Higher Education

Transcript

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Mary Ellen : So I think they do believe in what they do and they persist in it because despite all these challenges, I think they see real rewards with their students.

Natieka : Hello and welcome to School Me, the National Education Association's podcast dedicated to helping educators thrive at every stage of their careers. I'm your host, Natieka Samuels. There is a mental health crisis in this country from elementary schools to our highest levels of education. And while there are a lot of studies [00:00:30] about student mental health and a lot of talk about the intense stress K through 12 teachers experience, not as much attention is paid to those who are in higher ed settings. Mary Ellen Flannery is a senior writer who has been reporting on the mental health challenges of staff and faculty on college and university campuses for NEA. I've invited her onto the show today to discuss the mental health crisis on higher ed campuses and what solutions exist for our members. Thank you for joining us today, Mary Ellen.

Mary Ellen : Thanks for having me, Natieka. I'm excited about it.

Natieka : So [00:01:00] let's start with a little bit about you. Can you talk to me about your career here at NEA and what you've been working on?

Mary Ellen : I've been at NEA for just about 20 years. I'm a senior writer editor. I have a specific beat in higher ed, which means I write about the issues that matter to faculty and staff, but I write also a little bit about everything, bathroom breaks, trends in classrooms, everything.

Natieka : So you've been working on a few articles about the mental [00:01:30] health crisis on college campuses for NEA Today. So who have you been talking to when you are interviewing people for the story? Is it mostly staff, faculty, students, all of the above?

Mary Ellen : It's mostly been NEA members. We represent faculty and staff at public institutions in the United States, so community colleges and Washington State research universities in Maine and all these kinds of colleges in between those things. So those are my sources generally. They're NEA members, [00:02:00] they're invested in their communities and they do have a specific interest in mental health for themselves and for their colleagues.

Natieka : In short, how would you describe the mental health landscape on these public college campuses across the country?

Mary Ellen : It's not great. It's pretty tough out there. There's just a lot of issues and I think we, by we I just mean people who write about higher ed, have done a pretty good job of navigating the landscape for student mental health [00:02:30] issues. I think those are pretty well documented, but the faculty and staff will work on these institutions have the same rates of depression and anxiety and stressed-outness as their students. They just don't generally get as much support or have access to as many resources as students. And it's tough. It's a problem that probably existed before the pandemic, but everything else, it got worse in the pandemic. And it's not easy being a faculty and staff member today on a campus in this country.

Natieka : [00:03:00] And I feel like you just touched on it a bit, but what are the key factors that are contributing to the mental health crisis on campuses today?

Mary Ellen : So I think it depends a lot on the role you occupy on your campus. So for staff, and these are people who work in offices like you might work in an admissions office or a financial aid office or a research lab. I think it has a lot to do with working conditions, the work overload, lack of employees. There were a lot of layoffs in that sector during the pandemic [00:03:30] and they have not yet recovered the same number of staff that they had previously. So the people who are still around are just doing more work. All of that kind of contributes to a feeling of mental unease. If you're a faculty member, it's a little bit different depending on the stage of career that you're in. But generally faculty, it's a very competitive environment. They have sort of this perfectionist culture. You don't go into higher education because you're super easygoing.

So early career faculty, they're climbing the tenure ladder. There's this [00:04:00] lack of job security. They probably don't want to ask for help because they think it'll be detrimental to their careers. If you are a mid-career faculty member, you might be somebody who deals a lot with struggling students. Students needs have increased and they often go to faculty when they have emotional or academic needs. And by the way, they more often go to women faculty with emotional or academic needs. So that compounds that sense of mental unwellness.

If you are an adjunct faculty member, it's like worse all around because you're [00:04:30] generally working part-time in multiple places. You're probably not getting healthcare through any of those institutions because you're not considered a full-time employee at any of them, and that means you're disconnected from other campus supports. And then the other group of employees that we include in our membership are grad students who work. They're really grad employees, and that's a pretty difficult life. Research shows that about three quarters of them work far more than 40 hours a week. A large percentage of them are dissatisfied with their work-life balance. And so they have specific [00:05:00] problems too.

Natieka : So that crossover of employee and students seems very tough because I was just about to ask about how the college campus mental health crisis is impacting the overall academic environment and the student experience. And so of course those people are getting it from both sides. But if we talk about the more traditional split of just thinking about the students who are only there to learn, how does that trickle down to them?

Mary Ellen : There's a lot going on in students, [00:05:30] especially in the kinds of institutions we have members at, which are largely like community colleges and public institutions. So the faculty members that I talk to, their students might be working while they're also going to school. They might have their own families. Large number of them are what you call non-traditional students. So they might be older. So they come to class with a lot of problems and they often look to faculty as a resource to solve those problems.

But faculty really aren't trained like that. They're subject matter experts generally, [00:06:00] if you're talking to an English professor, they might know a whole lot about 19th-century literature, but they don't know a whole lot about how to support somebody who's having anxiety or depression. So it does mean that students in the end probably have more challenges in completing their degree programs, which is the point of higher education. So it's tough. The campuses deal with this in a couple different ways. They try to make mental health services available to their students, but when budgets [00:06:30] are tight, those are the people usually who are cut first and even less. But increasingly they make mental health services available to faculty and staff.

Natieka : And we hear a lot about the stress on K through 12 teachers and dealing with children dealing with large class sizes. Just overall it being a very demanding job. But I think we hear a lot less about that in the college and university level. So what are some of the differences that you would say are presented [00:07:00] between a K through 12 educator and a higher ed educator in terms of the challenges and stressors that are unique to the university context?

Mary Ellen : I mean, K-12, in my experiences, they're generally a much more integrated campus. So teachers have more access to social workers or school psychologists or other specialized support personnel. College campuses tend to be a lot more siloed. So if you are in a physics department, you definitely know [00:07:30] your other physics people. You might know other people in the sciences if you're physically in the same building, but it's a much greater divide to get to the student affairs people or to get to the counseling center.

Just physically I think there's a lot of barriers that exist on higher ed campuses that don't exist in K-12. There's, I think just this idea that K-12 teachers know more about the whole child than faculty do, and I don't know if that's just myth-making, but I think there's that sense that you [00:08:00] go into K-12 because you care about kids and you really want to take care of them. Our faculty care a lot about their students, but they don't generally go through the same kind of education programs to be a teacher that K-12 teachers go through. They get PhDs in whatever academic field that they're super interested in, and then they might not have the same kind of preparation to deal with this whole student type issues.

Natieka : And have there been studies done on these issues at the university level? I know that we hear a lot about that eight to [00:08:30] 12 level.

Mary Ellen : There's a few. I just wrote a story about mental health issues amongst faculty and staff and did some work trying to find studies to show the prevalence of those issues. And I found one that was relatively recent that showed that the rates of faculty and staff who are dealing with issues like anxiety and depression are pretty much identical to the rates of their students who are dealing with issues like anxiety and depression. So those really common mental health challenges are equally prevalent on higher ed [00:09:00] campuses in all the cohorts there. And I think they're equally prevalent in K-twelve amongst all the cohorts there. Some of the numbers that I found, which I thought were kind of interesting and disturbing were that 33% of faculty say they're often or always physically exhausted. And nearly four out of 10 say they are often or always emotionally exhausted, which just seems like a horrible thing to go through life feeling like, "I just don't want to do this today."

Natieka : And when I also think about unique stressors, I wanted to talk about the concept of tenure [00:09:30] or maybe even being chosen as let's say department chair or just dealing with the fact that the world of higher ed feels under assault a bit because there's attacks on DEI and changing attitudes about whether college is actually worth it. And all of those kind of external factors. Are you seeing that as-

Mary Ellen : Definitely.

Natieka : ... within the level of concern there?

Mary Ellen : So I think on a personal level, if you're a faculty member and you're new, [00:10:00] I don't know how familiar everybody is with tenure on higher ed institutions, but generally if you're hired on a tenure track position, you have a specific number of years to achieve tenure and to get tenure, you have to teach, you have to serve on campus committees, they call it service. And you have to do research and get published and the clock is ticking. So it's very stressful. And at the same time, you might also have other roles that could be stressful on a campus. I talk to this woman who does employee counseling [00:10:30] at UMass Amherst. She was like, "You know who the unhappiest people on campuses are? Department chairs. Nobody likes that job. They don't have any real power. They're trying to herd their colleagues along in specific directions. And those people are like, 'Hey, I don't really work for you.'"

They're deeply unhappy having counselors who are actually on a campus and know about those strange cultural phenomena of a campus, like how stressful it is to be an early career faculty member going for tenure or how stressful and awful it is to be a department chair, that's really helpful. So [00:11:00] those are the individual challenges, but you brought up the broader challenges that are happening in higher ed right now. Those have become magnified in recent years, probably over the last decade. There's this idea that you have to prove what you're doing is worth the money that kids are spending on it because college has gotten so, so expensive and student debt is out of control. So there's this idea that it's kind of like a business now. And with that idea, you have to show the return on investment, the ROI factor. And faculty have never had that [00:11:30] mindset, I don't think.

The idea that especially older faculty, but maybe younger faculty too, they got into this work because they love the subject matter. They want to work with students who are curious. They want to develop passions. They're into inventing new things, curing things, researching things. They're not into how much money do you get paid for this particular degree? But those are the questions people are asking. And that's super stressful. The number of kids going to college has decreased in recent years because I think a lot of people [00:12:00] are doing that return on investment in their own heads and thinking, "I don't know that this is worth it. Why am I going to pay $100,000 for a degree when I can get a pretty good job out of high school without one?" And then politically higher education seems more partisan than it has, and I don't know exactly why, but you see specific states passing legislation that will limit what faculty can teach or that would close diversity and equity and inclusion offices on campuses. And that's happened in an increasing number of states in the past two years.

Natieka : It's been a bit of gloom and doom so far. So let's go into a little bit of [00:12:30] the hopeful element. What are some of the effective strategies or initiatives or even job titles that universities can implement to support the mental well-being of faculty and staff and students? But since we're focusing a bit on faculty and staff here, we'll start there.

Mary Ellen : So I think I'll put them into two buckets of solutions. The first bucket is getting mental health supports to people who need mental health supports. And that's [00:13:00] usually some kind of employee assistance program that's free and accessible and high quality. And for this recent story where I looked at mental health trends and faculty and staff, I talked to this woman who is the director of that program at UMass Amherst, which is the flagship university in the University of Massachusetts system. She's on campus. And that really makes a difference in understanding the culture of an institution. She's really invested in it. She and her colleagues live in the area. They understand all [00:13:30] these stressors that might be specific to their institutional culture. That is probably the gold standard in mental health care. And it's not everywhere. A lot of institutions are outsourcing those services now. So if you are a staff person who has anxiety or depression or you just need some help, it's very likely you're going to be calling somebody who is somewhere else and maybe not as fluent in the language of your university.

So that's one bucket, the actual mental health support. [00:14:00] The other bucket is just paying people more, creating workplace conditions that are manageable. If you're a staff person, you shouldn't be the single point of failure in your university. If you should have a employer that lets you work a reasonable day, you should feel supported. You should feel appreciated and respected on your campus. Some of those are bargaining issues. We see our faculty and staff unions bargaining for more pay and for more reasonable workloads. And some of those can be worked out in joint committees [00:14:30] between union and administrators on campuses. But people are mentally healthier when they're not living in their cars, which is something that actually happens to adjunct faculty in America. They are mentally healthy when they could pay for their food, when they sleep eight hours a day, and none of that happens when you are a poor person.

Natieka : Thanks for listening to School Me, and a quick thank you to all of the NEA members listening. If you're not an NEA member yet, visit nea.org/whyjoin to learn more about member benefits. [00:15:00] So there's a lot of different words that we're using. We're saying faculty and staff, and then there's graduate students who are teaching assistants as well. What are all of those different roles that we are looking at when we're thinking about the different types of crises that people might be in? And why do those roles contribute to their unique set of issues

Mary Ellen : Mm-hmm. In terms of mental health, obviously mental health issues are pervasive across all kinds of employment categories, but there's [00:15:30] two that I think deserve our special attention. And one is adjunct faculty, also known as contingent faculty. These are people who work on a contract basis, usually for one semester at a time. They might be hired to teach one class, maybe two classes. In California, they call them freeway flyers because they work like they're driving on the freeway all day, right? They go from campus to campus to campus so that they can kind of put together a full-time salary, but they're really not full-time employees at any one institution. They're part-time employees at [00:16:00] maybe like three or four institutions. They're not well paid at all, and they don't generally have access to the supports that full-time employees do. So if there was an employee assistance program on your campus, they're probably not getting access to it.

They're not going to qualify for employer-provided health insurance. It's just a really difficult industry. And a few years ago I did a story about a woman who was teaching in California and actually living in her car. She showered in the fitness center on her campus. And not surprisingly, she was really stressed out. She had a lot of mental health [00:16:30] problems, but they were totally specific to her living and working conditions. Give that person an apartment and a real salary, and they probably will be feeling a lot better. The other group of employees are graduate employees who are pursuing graduate degrees while also working at the institution.

Their average salary is about $19,000 a year. They might have health insurance depending on whether they're a union or not. And in fact, they are the fastest growing segment of higher ed union membership because they're seeing that [00:17:00] raising their voice together is often a means to getting the kind of supports they need on their campuses. They might be able to negotiate for regular working hours, they might be able to negotiate for better pay and access to health insurance. So those two really stand out in my mind as being people who need our support in our resources.

Natieka : And so again, to get to maybe the good part, who is doing this well? You've talked about one university in little bits, but hopefully you've found somebody who is finding solutions [00:17:30] out there.

Mary Ellen : I did mention UMass Amherst because I am a fan of the work that they're doing. I love that they have an on-campus employee assistance program that's staffed by union members who are embedded in their culture. The people I talked to, there're also really hopeful about this Okanagan Compact that the university has joined and other institutions are in it too. It's focused on creating healthy workplaces. And the union there is making sure that they have a voice and that faculty have a voice and staff. People have a voice. It's called the Okanagan Charter. It's a network of universities who [00:18:00] are working to promote health.

I think it's a project with huge potential, but like a lot of things, the devil's in the details. So we will see how that goes. Unfortunately, I'm probably able to tell you about places that I don't think are doing it that well, that are outsourcing these services, that are trying to save money, but then end up incurring greater personal costs because people don't want to do the job anymore. But that's more common unfortunately, especially since the pandemic, these budgets are pretty tight on these campuses. Public funds to public institutions have [00:18:30] really not recovered since the Great Recession, and there's only so much money you can ask students to pay. And mental health services are kind of the thing that tend to get cut.

Natieka : Yeah. And why do you think that mental health is so deprioritized on college campuses? I could say everywhere, but that's too big of a question, so we'll keep it focused to what we're talking about today. Why don't people want to invest in even one person whose job that it is to do this when people are building buildings [00:19:00] that definitely cost more than people and all kinds of other things that people are willing to spend money on, aside from the actual mental health of the employees and the students that go there?

Mary Ellen : Well, it is expensive. And like I said, budgets are tight. If you look at the way public institutions are funded today, say like 20 years ago, 80% of the funding to a college like University of Michigan or University of Virginia or wherever, generally came from their state government. And the remaining 20% generally came from students. [00:19:30] Today, the ratio is totally flipped. A very small percentage comes from states. I think in Virginia it's like 11%, 13%, something like that. And the vast majority of their funding comes from students and families.

So it is true that mental health care is expensive, but I think what you're really asking is prioritization. Why is it such a low priority? And I don't know really because I see it as integral to student success, which I think is the number one metric on every campus. How many kids graduate? How many [00:20:00] kids are able to reach degree completion in four to six years? And they can't do that if they're not mentally healthy and they can't do it if they don't have mentally well, faculty and staff too. I don't know. It's a tough nut. But I do see a lot of construction on campuses. I do see a lot of new positions in administrative offices, high paid positions in administrative offices. So I do think it's a question of priority, and I don't know why it's such a low priority. I think for everybody's benefit, it should be higher.

Natieka : And what is the role [00:20:30] of the union in all of this? Because you mentioned at the Amherst example that the employee assistance program on campus is associated with the union. So how can those people who are in our union and their states and locals, how can they use that power to get support that they need?

Mary Ellen : Most colleges and universities will have wellness committees. They'll have joint labor management wellness committees. Our members need to make sure that [00:21:00] they have a seat at the table. They can raise their voices through their union and make sure that when their campus is talking about all kinds of things that have to do with health, that they have a say in states where they collectively bargain. You need to collectively bargain for the workplace conditions that make you a healthy person. You need to bargain for better. Pay is actually connected, I think to mental health. You need to bargain for a workload that doesn't make you exhausted and unhealthy. All these things I think [00:21:30] could happen through your union if you join it and seek an active role and raise your voices together.

Natieka : Which is added time, but time well spent in the end.

Mary Ellen : Oh, I know. There's an irony in telling people who are super stressed out to do more work through their union, but the long-term gains, I think that's the only way you're going to get them.

Natieka : And often when we talk about the stress that teachers are experiencing K through 12 teachers, people feel like it's [00:22:00] a really hard job. They're dealing with children all day. So no wonder they are stressed because you can only imagine what it's like to have 30 children or even teens talking to you all day about various things in addition to the workplace challenges of not having planning time, not having breaks, not being able to even go to the bathroom, all of those kinds of things. But because professors, adjunct faculty, all of these folks are dealing with adults. I feel like I don't hear that same [00:22:30] kind of language, which is fair because we are talking about adults, but when you talk to these people who are really toughing it out in these jobs, do you feel like they're staying at these jobs from a deep passion for teaching their students, for exploring their academic interests? If the conditions are so bad, why are people continuing to stay?

Mary Ellen : I think people do have better insight into K-12. And maybe it's because like you say, higher ed is [00:23:00] more like adults, so we don't see it the same way. And I think also when people reflect on their own college experience, they usually do it sort of these rose-colored classes and they're like, "I loved college." And I think there's just generally this kind of like myth-making around college campuses in our culture. They always seem so beautiful in the movies.

Why do people persist? I think it is a tough life. I think like a lot of educators at all levels, they're really driven by the mission. They really believe in higher education. They believe that [00:23:30] it's the backbone of the American dream you are not going to achieve in this nation without an advanced degree. I think they think that they are still the centers of entrepreneurship and invention in America. If we're going to save the world from climate change, it's probably not going to be a private businessman who comes up with those solutions. It's probably going to happen in a research lab with really just young, inventive minds. So I think they do believe in what they do and they persist in it because despite all these challenges, I think they see real rewards with their students.

Natieka : [00:24:00] Are there any specific recommendations or best practices that you've seen as you've talked to different people on this topic that you would recommend that university administrators and leaders take some notice of? If they want to prioritize mental health supports for their faculty and staff?

Mary Ellen : They have to talk to faculty and staff first of all, they need to reach out and invite them to be part of the conversation. It can't be something that happens in the third floor office [00:24:30] of administrators. They need to open up the dialogue. And I think that's what union members are demanding on most campuses to be part of the conversation. That's the number one thing. Number two, put some money into it. Consider your institutional priorities and invest in the health and wellbeing of your employees and students.

Natieka : Looking ahead, what do you hope for all of the people that you have interviewed, what do you hope for them to get through their institutions? Obviously, you can't wave [00:25:00] a magic wand, but if we're talking about sustainable long-term change, what do you hope they get?

Mary Ellen : Well, I don't think they're going to get it through their institutions. I think they're going to get it through their unions, and I hope for them is that they get workplaces that see their value, that reward it with fair salaries, with manageable workloads, with respect, and with a real voice in what happens on their campuses and in their institutions.

Natieka : Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Mary Ellen.

Mary Ellen : Thanks Natieka. It was [00:25:30] really fun to talk to you. I appreciate it.

Natieka : Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a single episode of School Me. And take a minute to rate the show and leave a review. It really helps us out and it makes it easier for more educators to find us. For more tips to help you bring the best to your students, text POD, that's P-O-D, to 48744.