DECLINING STUDENT RESILIENCE: WHY?

In a Psychology Today article, “Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges,” Peter Gray had written:

• ...emergency calls to Counseling had more than doubled over the past five years. Students are increasingly seeking help for, and apparently having emotional crises over, problems of everyday life. (September, 2015)

The article quotes the head of counseling services at a major university:

• “Our students are no different from what is being reported across the country on the state of late adolescence/early adulthood. There has been an increase in diagnosable mental health problems, but there has also been a decrease in the ability of many young people to manage the everyday bumps in the road of life. Whether we want it or not, these students are bringing their struggles to their teachers and others on campus who deal with students on a day-to-day basis. The lack of resilience is interfering with the academic mission of the University and is thwarting the emotional and personal development of students.”

How does this decline in the lack of student resilience interfere with the academic mission of the university? This unnamed clinician cites the fact that students can no longer take failure. Consequently, their plight pressures professors to lower standards:

• Less resilient and needy students have shaped the landscape for faculty in that they are expected to do more handholding, lower their academic standards, and not challenge students too much.

Others cite the same problems. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently ran an article by Robin Wilson entitled, “An Epidemic of Anguish: Overwhelmed by Demand for Mental-Health Care, Colleges Face Conflicts in Choosing How to Respond" (Aug. 31, 2015):

• “Families often expect campuses to provide immediate, sophisticated, and sustained mental-health care. After all, most parents are still adjusting to the idea that their children no longer come home every night, and many want colleges to keep an eye on their kids, just as they did. Students, too, want colleges to give them the help they need, when they need it. And they need a lot. Rates of anxiety and depression among American college students have soared in the last decade, and many more students than in the past come to campus already on medication for such illnesses. The number of students with suicidal thoughts has risen as well. Some are dealing with serious issues, such as psychosis, which typically presents itself in young adulthood, just when students are going off to college. Many others, though, are struggling with what campus counselors say are the usual stresses of college life: bad grades, breakups, being on their own for the first time. And they are putting a strain on counseling centers.

Why? There are many explanations for this implosion. Some sight the lack of play that supposedly contributes to the development of problem solving skills. Others claim that parents have been too ready to solve the problems of their children, while other experts blame the internet and social media.

In any event, our students are facing a crisis of hope. They had come to the university with the hope that they had what was required to master the challenges of education and found that they were lacking.

Why then are today’s students less resilient than before? Here is my humble assessment. They had been taught to trust and believe in themselves that they could do it all and then found that they couldn’t.

They had been infected by a faith that has recently swept across the West. Instead, the widespread faith had been the Christian faith which had taught us that we don’t have what it takes but our Savior does, as the pagan King Nebuchadnezzar had learned:

• “ ‘Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of people.’” (Daniel 4:17)

The people of old realized that they weren’t left to carry the burdens of life on their flimsy shoulders. Instead, they understood that their God was with them:

• If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:31-32)

Understanding the oversight of God in our lives gives us great courage, a courage that the vast majority of students now lack.

Without this hope, life can be crushing. With it, we can stand even when we feel like running away.