Professors – Not Administrators – Got Students Through the Pandemic
Student development and wellness, both inside and outside the classroom, are now top priorities for many colleges and universities, which have hired more administrators to work with students on a wide range of initiatives promoting professional, academic, and interpersonal growth. In theory, these seemingly ubiquitous administrators support students during their college journeys. But new data, collected just as schools are transitioning out of pandemic lockdowns, make clear that students don’t feel that these administrators understand them very well. A nationally representative survey from College Pulse of more than 2,000 students reveals that students felt closer to their professors than to the administrators.
The survey asked students to answer whether certain groups at their respective colleges and universities “see them.” Do these respective groups understand the personal challenges that students face on campus? When asked about their school’s upper administration – such as the school’s president, provost, and deans – only 17 percent of students strongly agreed that these administrators understood them, while another 26 percent said that they felt “somewhat” understood. That adds up to just over four in 10 students (43 percent) – a minority – believing that their school’s administrators understood their needs.
It’s possible that high-level administrators may be more disconnected from students than the administrators with whom students interact regularly. When asked about administrators and staff who regularly deal with students in dormitories and dining halls, affinity centers, and shared commons, the numbers rise a bit. Twenty-two percent of students strongly believe that student-services staff “see” them, while another 34 percent think that they “somewhat” see them – adding up to 56 percent of students who think that they are understood by student-facing staff. Still, nearly half of students still report that their needs and views are not well-considered by a group of people often more numerous than the faculty themselves.
It is the faculty, it turns out, who students believe “see them” best – the professors who students regard as central to their collegiate experience. Almost a quarter (22 percent) of college and university students strongly believe that their professors see them, while another 42 percent say that their professors see them to a lesser extent, adding up to nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of students saying that they feel seen by faculty – an appreciably higher figure than students give for administrators.
When asked in a different question to identify which group of university professionals they think understands them, with options ranging from professors to dining hall staff, 60 percent of students responded that they were best understood by their professors, while 46 percent said their academic advisors and 28 percent said their teaching assistants. Only 19 percent of students said they felt administrators understood them, making clear that these staff members are not in the hearts and minds of college and university students. While some academic advisors may also be administrators, they are often faculty members as well, or they hold a Ph.D., as opposed to the educational or student-service master’s degrees that are the norm among administrators.
These data should be of great use to college presidents and boards of trustees. Strong evidence now exists that expensive administrative staffs are not succeeding at their putative role on college campuses. Students are not connecting with these administrators, a huge class of employees often directly responsible for promoting a narrow view of diversity and identity, and pontificating about the oppression they believe permeates American society. Administrators have created a toxic and woke collegiate environment that suppresses open discourse. In recognition of the fact that it was professors, not administrators, who helped students manage through the pandemic, colleges and universities should take steps to pare back their administrative bloat.
