Confronting the Complexities of Diversity, Culture, and Mental Health

Ensure that students have access to financial aid

Students are maneuvering complex challenges and interruptions to their study goals, adjusting their study abroad plans, and choosing to stay at home and enroll in their local universities. Local universities, in turn, see an opportunity to expand and build programs to attract and retain these full-paying, academically strong students.

• Helping compensate for missed experiences, opportunities, and developmental milestones
• Facilitating the transition back to pre-COVID-19 routines
• Attending to areas of basic need, including food and housing insecurities
• Supporting students’ ability to motivate/focus
• Fostering social connections
• Alleviating academic distress caused by COVID-19

As higher education continues to navigate this new public health reality, colleges and universities will need to respond not only to increased demand for mental health services, but also to the broader negative impacts that might not require mental health treatment.

Expand access to and strengthen college

Student mobility-focused partnerships can be nuanced. While the agreement usually focuses on the complex joint degree assessment and program design, the role of student demand is often overlooked.

This movement to study at home can be leveraged into new kinds of partnerships and a new vision of study abroad. 

The pandemic meant most students were barred from their campuses from the end of the autumn term until 17 May, so they missed out on in-person teaching, access to facilities such as libraries, and social and extracurricular activities. Many were frustrated to find themselves unable to access rooms in halls of residence and flats they had already paid for.

Partnerships focused on student mobility have risen to the top for international institutions seeking to build meaningful and sustainable relationships with their American counterparts.