How many times in student affairs have we heard departments, universities, leadership, claim that they are student-centered? But are we? For a field that prides itself on putting students at the forefront of our work, it does not always feel like we are accomplishing this goal. Why is that?
First, what do we mean by student-centered? I am not convinced that we agree on the definition of student-centered. There can be multiple definitions of student-centered.
First, there is doing what the students want us to do. While I think it is important to take student preferences into account, this definition can obviously go to the extreme. It leaves out the idea that growth and learning can be uncomfortable and disregards safety concerns. An example might be allowing students to change rooms due to a roommate conflict without participating in a mediation.
Another way to consider being student-centered is having the student’s best interest in mind. Using this perspective, it could mean building programs to challenge students and help them learn, while building safety rails so that they do not make mistakes they can’t come back from or not letting them fail. However, this thought process lends itself to paternalism and can prevent students from learning how to make decisions for themselves. A common example is while advising students on programming, the staff taking over the planning when the student drops the ball so that the program does not fail.
Student-centered could mean putting students’ needs above money and rankings for the school. This definition is great in theory, but often justifies lower wages for staff or toxic environments. For example, it could look like housing staff being on-call for their building the entire time it is open. While this meets the need for students to always have someone available in emergencies, it causes burnout in the staff who are required to be on call for long periods of time. This need could be met with different staffing structures.
Even if we could agree on a definition for student-centered, how do we achieve it? Student affairs have tried several different methods. A common one is to have students involved on committees or garner opinions on decisions from groups such as student government or residence hall associations. While there are some exceptions, oftentimes this technique lets students into the decision-making process to impact the decisions in a substantial way.
Another classic method to check on student-centeredness is assessment. We send survey after survey to our students asking about their experience at our school and expect the results to magically tell us what the students want and need. The result of this is that students are overexposed to surveys and do not necessarily answer the survey with the attention we would like from them. Also, not all surveys are well written, nor answer the questions we really want and analyzing a large-scale survey takes a lot of staff time and effort. Often we default to closed-ended questions, which may provide answers, but do not provide context.
Sometimes we default to simply letting the students get away with not consistently meeting expectations. For example, we often have students manning front desks or reception areas. We tell them “If you don’t have any work to do, then feel free to study or complete your homework.” Inevitably, there comes a day when the student has work to do for the office and doesn’t do the work, instead studying because they have a test later that day and they haven’t studied yet. And we let them.
However, I do not think that we administrators are completely to blame when we slip out of student-centeredness. There are many barriers to being truly student-centered. One of the first barriers I think about is boundaries. Many of us have placed boundaries around our work lives that are really for our own well-being, but can contradict our desire to be student-centered. For example, students often want to have meetings and programs at night. But what if we need to have a more strict 9-to-5 schedule? Working nights consistently can interfere with family life, hobbies, or general rest and relaxation. Which is more important, our student-centeredness or our work/life balance?
I would be remiss if I did not mention money as a potential barrier. Administrators who work with students know that mental health issues have continued to rise on campus for a variety of reasons. However, schools do not have endless budgets to continue to hire more and more counselors or mental health professionals for their campus. A lack of money can prevent us from providing students the services they need at the level and scale they need them.
And lastly, the political environment can be a huge barrier to being student-centered. How many among us have been counseled to impress our supervisor when they should not be the focus of our work? Often, to get ahead in the field, we have to play to the opinions of leadership that can be outdated, biased, or motivated by their own journey to rise in the ranks. When we value leadership’s approval more than students’ needs, we cannot be student-centered.
I do not have answers to the questions I asked in my first paragraph. But while I wrote this piece, I used it as a reflection on my own practices. There are times when I think I am able to be the student-centered professional that I strive to be…then there are the other times. I urge you to reflect with yourself and your team on your student-centered practices. What do you do well, what barriers are you battling, where can you improve? Because after all, we would not have jobs without the students.
Erin Long (she/her/hers) currently serves as the Assistant Director for Volunteerism and Service-Learning at the University of Texas at Austin. She recently transitioned out of working in residential education for many years and has just earned her doctorate of Higher Education Leadership from UT. Erin is passionate about learning and ways to support students in any and all forms of learning. She loves to read and hopes to find other hobbies now that she is done with her degree.
