As parents and students prioritize mental health, higher education must respond

In an op-ed published in University Business, Pyx Health CEO and Co-Founder, Cindy Jordan, discusses how higher education institutions must respond to the ongoing mental health crisis among their students….

Long gone are the days where an attractive campus or competitive academic program is enough to attract and retain the best and brightest students. A recent study uncovered a new trend where parents consider mental health their top priority for their college-bound kids – perhaps even more important than actually having their kids go to college. This translates to parents increasingly prioritizing the availability and robustness of mental health services when ranking their first-choice schools for their kids. In fact, one university executive recently told me the topic of mental health services comes up in well over half of the conversations with prospective parents and students. This means that in order to achieve your incoming class goals, you must address scaling mental health solutions to your campus. But with limited budgets, mental health professional staffing shortages, and a growing demand, how can higher ed successfully meet these important needs?