Yes, Community Colleges Care About Mental Health
American higher education is profoundly unequal, and community colleges bear the brunt of that inequality. According to a 2019 report from the Century Foundation, “the lion’s share of the blame lies with policymakers who systematically shortchange community colleges financially, giving two-year institutions the fewest resources to educate those students who tend to have the greatest needs.” This is not news to anyone who spends time in public higher education, and the latest resulting crisis — cuts to mental health services — is entirely predictable.
Nonetheless, the colleges themselves are being blamed for not doing more. Recently, Harrisburg Area Community College announced that it was forced to cut 20 staff counseling positions. Incredibly, Inside Higher Ed’s story about those cuts ran with the caption “Mental Health is Low Priority for Community Colleges.”
There is no data to suggest that that community colleges do not prioritize or worse yet do not care about mental health. It is a frequent topic of conversation among both presidents and trustees, and on the minds of virtually every community college staff member, professor, and student I’ve ever encountered (and I have visited literally hundreds of community colleges over the last decade).
In 2016 the Association of Community College Trustees partnered with my research team and the Healthy Minds Study at the University of Michigan to take a look at mental health among community college students precisely because community college leaders do care about these issues. Our report , based on a survey of more than 4,000 students at ten community colleges, revealed high levels of need and low levels of services. We learned that nearly half of those students had at least one mental health condition, with depression and anxiety the most common issues. These rates are high when compared with incidence among four-year students. Reported use of mental health services was considerably lower than the prevalence of mental health conditions, and community college students were much less likely to report receiving informal (non-clinical) counseling or support for mental health, as compared to four-year students.
On-campus support is critical for students enduring both financial and time poverty. Moreover, it does not appear that community college students are getting this help off campus. Among students at four-year colleges and universities, campus services account for approximately half of mental health service use, but we found that for community college students the proportion was 10% or lower at most colleges, and just 36% at the college with the highest proportion.
Community colleges know how to support mental health services: it requires money. Private research universities are able to spend three times as much money on a per-student basis compared to community colleges. Public research universities spend 60% more. This is a reflection of policy decisions. We get what we pay for in education — and right now, we are actively fueling a significant mental health crisis by underfunding the institutions with the most need. That is what we all must care about.
