Academic Frame

Anxiety- Anxiety is the #1 psychological complaint of students in college. I am searching to find why students are experiencing more anxiety than ever before. Is it because of college or because of life? Is it the students bringing it upon themselves or is it because of the life students are brought in to by college? The APA cites in The State of Mental Health on Campus: A Growing Crisis that from 2000 to now, mental illness prevalence has risen from 16% to 44%. Anxiety is the highest of all, frequently being cited as the biggest complaint for why students seek psychological help.

Millennials- This is a term that Alicia Flatt frames her whole article around. This is very important for my project because to explain the fact that young adults live different lives than they did ten years before, the term millennials is the way to differentiate them from other generations. With the term millennial, i can find much more research on people of my age group and also use millennial to explain why students today are living differently. Laying out what has happened in millennial history will give me a chance to explain to the reader just how different society is today. That is a big point of my paper, millennials live different lives and college campuses are not accommodating. This also gives me a name to put to the face of the age group i am targeting. In her article, A Suffering Generation: Six Factors Contributing to the Mental Health Crisis in North American Higher Education, Flatt cites that the sic factors leading to mental health uprise is academic pressure, financial burden, accessibility, Male-to-Female ratio, technology, and lifestyle. Her point, that the life of these students is drastically different is a back bone for me and I will begin my paper with her article.

Privatization- Privatization is a seasoned topic in our class. I will be using Newfield, Armstong & Hamilton, and Collinge to paint the picture that the government is giving less to schools, causing them to turn to private outlets for funding. This also means that the government and schools are giving less to students in terms of aid and students need to turn to private outlets. But this does not just go for money, the less schools are supporting their students academically, and mentally like I point out, the more students turn to overall private outlets for the support. Lucky students can pay for school out of pocket by family and have them tp support them. The common college student does not have that. They have loans and they are on their own, but this elitist preference that schools has created has caused students to feel divided when college was made to be 4 years of equal playing ground for everyone to figure out their path. It is not longer so easy for students. This is the beginning of the domino effect of financial burden and academic stress on mental health and the prevalence of anxiety.

Financial Burden- Financial burden is being looked at as a result of privatization. Because of the increase in college tuition and the lack of funding from the government, students are less capable to pay for schooling and need to pay off loans. It is also created a class divide in college when students should be on the same playing ground. This leaves students extremely stressed and further, they feel inferior to those who do not struggle with paying off school. I have found many study that associates financial burden with the increased stress of students in college. I will be using a study called Sick of our Loans: Student Borrowing and the Mental Health of Young Adults in the United States. This looks at what financial burden of any kind can do for the stress of young students and then emphasizes that loan borrowing only exacerbates this issue.

Academic pressure- Academic Pressure could stand on its own for a huge issue going on in American Higher Education. I am looking at it from an angle of not so much what schools expect from their students, but how academic pressure is a result of privatization. Students have much more to lose when they are under the pressure of debt and compensation for that. I will be using Armstrong and Hamilton's Paying for the Party to explain that academic pressure is caused by the divide in higher class and lower class, doubling the pressure of those who have loans to compensate for with a successful college career and job perspective afterwards. I also have found a study that I will be using for my counter argument and turn around called, Academic Stress and Health: Exploring the Moderating Role of Personality Hardiness. The study is looking to see if hardiness can play a role in academic stress, but while it does interfere with health, it doesn't protect students from stress.