Faculty, Administrators and Students Aren’t Describing the Same Problem

The Findings

Faculty and administrators agree on their diagnosis of student struggle: ineffective study skills, followed by students arriving underprepared. Students tell a completely different story, ranking workload anxiety first and placing ‘underprepared’ ninth. That mismatch has real consequences. Fewer than 20% of students who faced mental health challenges this year accessed counseling through their institution, even though mental health has been the number one student life challenge for three consecutive years.

Faculty see study skills as the top challenge. Students don’t.
68% of faculty rank ineffective study skills first. Students rank it third.

faculty

40% of students rank workload anxiety as their number one classroom challenge.

students

84% of students aware of more than four support resources are likely to stay enrolled, vs. 67% among those aware of fewer.

more
support resources

fewer resources

The Breakdown

These aren’t minor differences in emphasis. They’re different diagnoses that lead to different interventions. When faculty see a student who isn’t performing, they’re likely to attribute it to gaps in preparation or study habits. When that same student reflects on their own experience, they’re more likely to describe feeling overwhelmed. That gap has real consequences, not only for student support, but for how institutions respond to AI.

Faculty and administrators who are focused on study skills and preparation tend to respond to AI primarily as an integrity threat. Students who are overwhelmed tend to use AI as a pressure valve. Those two realities require different institutional responses, and right now, many institutions are designing for the former while students are living the latter.

Dr. Zone connects this directly to what institutions are obligated to address. “One of the insights around the pressure students are feeling being a prerequisite to them seeking tools like AI to make things easier is something institutions really have to pay attention to. It all comes down to resource, whether that’s human resource, capital funds, investments into technology. And I think it is a moral obligation of institutions to be paying attention to that and be smart and intentional around how they’re actually doing that.”

Dr. Ford pushes back on the assumption that more resources automatically solves it. “We can’t make the assumption that just because students aren’t availing themselves to the resources available, those resources aren’t the right ones. Resources aren’t a monolith. Given your institutional context and mission and the kinds of students you serve, your resources may need to be curated very differently.”

The data also shows that faculty feel well-equipped to teach, with 65% agreeing their institution provides sufficient resources. But when it comes to practices that specifically address student anxiety, including individual outreach, activities to build belonging, and flexible deadlines, adoption drops sharply. Only 48% of faculty regularly build belonging activities into their courses. Only 11% use disaggregated student data.

The Takeaway

The gap between how institutions diagnose student struggle and how students experience it is wide enough to matter and narrow enough to close with intention. Institutions can:

Audit the gap between what faculty and administrators identify as top student challenges and what students report themselves. Where the distance is largest, that’s where intervention design needs to start.
Make support resources visible as part of the course experience, not just available through a separate portal. Students aware of more than four support resources are 84% likely to stay enrolled, compared to 67% among those aware of fewer.
Invest in teaching practices that address workload and belonging directly, including flexible deadlines, individual outreach, and activities that build academic confidence.