University Student Anxiety: A Look at Post-Pandemic Higher Ed & the Stress of Academic Competition

I'm excited to introduce you to Luke Perone, a new co-leader in my practice. Luke is a veteran educator and mentor. He is also an associate of The East Side Institute, where I have been on the faculty for decades. It is the home of social therapeutics. In 2024, when Luke became a social therapeutic coach, I seized the opportunity to invite him to join me in combining our passion and experience supporting college and university students. I'm thrilled that he has agreed, and together, we will be leading short-term groups, "University Student Support Group: Academics, Relationships, and Campus Culture," the first one starting October 23, 2024.

By way of introduction, this is Part 1 of an interview with Luke where he shares his 20+ year experience in academia and what he sees as challenges for students in university life.

Ann: I would like to start with you sharing a little bit of your background as an educator.

Luke: Sure. Thanks, Ann and thank you for the opportunity to connect with you and learn with you about our collaboration.

My most recent and ongoing performance in higher education has been as a faculty member at the University of Washington in Tacoma. I had been at other public universities in Memphis, Tennessee, and Chicago mostly working with undergraduates, though occasionally also with graduate students at each of those different universities.

I am primarily teaching classes in human development and education. This means that folks who want to learn about how babies grow, how to support young children's cognitive development, or how to support adult development often sign up for my classes.

My most frequent offerings are courses like “Lifespan Human Development,” which celebrates that development doesn't have an endpoint in our lives—a newer narrative for many folks. also teach a class in “Adult Development,” which, in light of that lifespan lens, is a pretty revolutionary offering. Most undergrads who come to my adult development class are interested in hearing, "So when do things start sagging? How do things start declining? What's the deficit narrative?" And then we bring a lot of hope and possibility to that course. Additionally, I teach a class on both child development and a cultural approach to development. These courses are powerful as they honor not only the lifespan development lens but also the perspective that development isn't as universal as people tend to think. The communities we are in, the communities we build and shape, are shaped by our development. (That's Lev Vygotsky’s influence).

I'll just say briefly that all of those classes, and even a separate class on development, are infused with my passion for play, imagination, and improv as an approach to supporting people's growth across the lifespan. In fact, it’s the anchor to any of the courses I've talked about, and it's a course in and of itself—I teach a course called “Lifespan Imaginative Play,” usually every spring, for the past 11 or so years.

Ann: That's wonderful, Luke, so innovative and enlightening. What kind of students tend to be attracted to your classes?

Luke: Most, if not all, of my students come to one or more of these classes because they are psychology majors, and either the course fulfills a requirement, like taking a lifespan development class, or serves their elective needs.

I also attract education majors for whom these classes serve their plans to go into teaching, taking a child development or the play class for those reasons. Excitingly, there are also folks who come from other disciplines—people doing health care work or going into biomedical sciences who will often take a lifespan class since it might help them prepare for their careers in healthcare. Folks interested in social welfare or social work also find my play classes helpful.

Ann: In the 20 years that you’ve been in academia, how do you think student life has changed for young people? What would you say today’s challenges are for students?

Luke: I’ve been aware of how much more competitive and alienating college has become for students. Many of my current students are the first in their families to attend college. They experience the culture and community of higher ed as foreign to them in many, ordinary ways: how one goes and does their classes, connects with their peers, understands the financial aid system, all of that and more. In addition, there’s so much stress, now more than I’ve noticed in the past, for getting the best grades and for achieving academic success, and they do that in competition with each other. For example, they see their classmates in the classroom as people vying for the same job, grade, or positive feedback they’re hoping to get from me. This creates an overly burdened world of high stress and anxiety.

Ann: Why do you think this has gotten worse in the past 20 years? What’s changed?

Luke: I feel as a culture, we’ve gotten much more competitive and divisive, and I think that energy has found its way even more so into higher education. Folks are still hoping that higher ed can "get them out" of whatever economic or social conditions they’re in. That burden is even more pronounced than it might have been 15 or 20 years ago.

I also think, sad to say, higher ed has become a much less welcoming place. While higher ed still offers student success offices and more inclusive practices, yet the system of higher ed remains as colonial and hierarchical as it has been. I think that disconnect has heightened stress and tension more than it did 15 or 20 years ago.

One last thing. I think the COVID pandemic has played a major role. The pandemic’s narrative in education is overly focused on the losses young people have experienced and the deficits they bring into higher education rather than drawing upon the strengths of what we learned during and after the pandemic. The push to return to normal has left people feeling that their lived experiences are not being acknowledged. They’re being asked to revert to the way things were, without recognizing who we've become during and since the pandemic.

Ann: Thank you for that insight, Luke. It makes sense that the world has gone through a painful, traumatic and collective experience during the pandemic and that we, including our institutions, are fixated on the losses and long for a return to how it was before and “go back to normal.” I have found in my therapeutic work that it’s generally much harder to build upon and create something new with our painful and challenging experiences, including ways in which we may have grown from them.

Luke: Yes, for example, while we’ve embraced more remote modalities—like using Zoom or doing things asynchronously—I think we don’t continuously build with the ways people created new kinds of relationships and activities through remote possibilities. It seems more like just something we did because we had to, rather than something that could increase inclusiveness in the university or build new kinds of partnerships around the world. There’s a push to insist that everyone learns best in person or in a classroom, and a push to go back to that. Unfortunately, I think that doesn’t privilege the fact that people might have found something new and hopeful from the remote experience. The lack of hope or new possibilities can make students feel like they’re being asked to fit into a world they may not know, align with, or contribute to.

Ann: What you’re describing is what also happening at the workplace, in the pressures to return to office.

Luke: Yes, whether it’s the return to work, holding meetings the way we did before. If we can invite—and this is both a higher ed and a work message, but also a lifespan message—if we can say, "How can we build with the diverse experiences, interests, and possibilities from the group to create new learning, teaching, and working environments?" then the stress doesn’t automatically disappear, but people feel like they can be a builder of the environment rather than just someone who shows up to an environment.

When I invite my my students to co-create environments rather than just attend a class or participate in a workshop, I relate to them as a builder of their learning environment rather than just a consumer. While building can also be stressful, there’s something more fulfilling about actively creating it. I encourage students to bring their experiences, their voices, and backgrounds to the group rather than passively following a set syllabus or expectations.

...Part 2 to follow!

We are Ann Green, a mental health provider with many years experience working with young adults, and Luke Perone, veteran adult educator and mentor in higher education. We havevcombined our 60 years of experience to offer an opportunity to help and support undergraduate and graduate students through challenges of college life, relationships, family pressures, academic stress, social isolation, anxiety, depression, and more. If you are experiencing anxiety and are struggling at college, Ann Green, NP and Luke Perone can help.