Category: Flourishing

On a weekday morning during spring break, a group of first-year and second-year college students gathered around a patient whose condition began to change. The patient’s blood pressure was rising, breathing growing shallow. Sudden drooling. 

It wasn’t a real patient. Behind the scenes, an instructor controlled the simulation using a mannequin. But the patient’s recovery wasn’t the point. The students’ introductory glimpse to the field of medicine was.

For some students, this might have been a confirmation: Yes, this is exactly what I want to do. For others, the realization could have been a cooler response, which would be just as important: Maybe this isn’t for me.

That moment — of clarity, uncertainty, or recalibration — is what Tufts University hoped to spark with its new JUMP-IN pilot program, a weeklong, immersive experience designed to help primarily first-year and some second-year students step, however briefly, into the lives they think they want. Ask a room full of first- and second-year college students what they want to do after graduation, and many will have an answer: Doctor. Lawyer. Engineer. Ask them what those jobs actually look like, day to day, and the answers may resemble vague impressions, a composite of jobs observed on television and heard about through friends and relatives.

This gap — between aspiration and understanding — is not just anecdotal. Surveys from organizations like the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) and Gallup have consistently found that while students feel pressure to choose a career path early, many lack meaningful exposure to what those careers entail. At the same time, research suggests that students who engage in experiential learning — internships, simulations, project-based work — are significantly more likely to feel confident in their career choices and to secure employment aligned with their interests after graduation. In other words, it’s not just about choosing a path. It’s about trying it on to see how it feels.

“We wanted students to begin to think about linking their interests to their academic learning to their career goals,” said Ellise LaMotte, the associate provost for student success at Tufts. The goal is not to arrive at definitive answers in a single week, but to develop the tools — and the self-awareness — to start asking better questions.

And just as importantly, students are encouraged to recognize when the answer might be, no thank you. “We did not want this program to just confirm what students already thought,” LaMotte said. “If someone came in thinking, ‘I want to be a doctor,’ and left realizing they didn’t —that was just as powerful.”

Learning by Doing 

Each JUMP-IN participant spends the week in one of five tracks, including pre-med and dental pathways as well as global policy, nutrition, and engineering-focused design. What unites them is a commitment to experiential learning. “The charge was that this needed to be hands-on,” LaMotte said. “The majority of the time was spent with them doing something.” 

In the Design Problem Solving (D.P.S.) track, that meant building structures out of melting Oreos — an exercise in material constraints and creative thinking. It meant working with modeling software, experimenting with 3D printing, and tackling real-world challenges. An open deck on top of the Tufts library was enclosed in glass so that it would be a safe place for students. But that design choice had an unexpected consequence: Birds were now flying into the glass. “One of the design flash challenges was: How can these students in this D.P.S. program for the week help to give some solutions to this problem?” LaMotte said. “So, it was a little tech heavy. But if you are somebody curious about how to solve problems, it would be appealing.”

For some, the experience was exhilarating. For others, it was clarifying in a different way. “There were students who realized, ‘This is harder than I thought,’ or ‘This isn’t what I imagined,’” LaMotte said.

In Global Policy Lab, students became senators in a climate policy simulation, debating legislation on a mock Senate floor at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston. They explored the role of drones in international security and engaged with local officials on immigration policy. 

In the Pre Med Connect track, students practiced suturing and patient care, responding to dynamic simulations that required quick thinking and teamwork. In the Dental Bridge track, students performed tooth wax-up modeling, simulation shadowing, suturing, and align impressions. In the Beyond the Plate track, students conducted “nutrition myth labs,” explored food systems, and visited facilities researching lab-grown meat. Across all tracks, students were asked not just to absorb information, but to apply it — to make decisions, test ideas, and reflect on outcomes.

For some, the experience was exhilarating. For others, it was clarifying in a different way. “There were students who realized, ‘This is harder than I thought,’ or ‘This isn’t what I imagined,’” LaMotte said. “And that’s valuable.”

Building Belonging through Shared Exploration

If JUMP-IN is about career exploration on the surface, it is equally about something deeper: connection. The program, piloted this spring break with 94 first-year students, was intentionally designed to reach those who may not yet have found their place on campus.

“Some of them knew each other,” LaMotte said. “But there were some who didn’t know anybody — and those are the folks we really, really wanted to get in touch with.” The challenge is a familiar one. The first year of college is often framed as a time of discovery and belonging, but for many students, that sense of connection doesn’t come easily. Social circles can feel closed, academic interests uncertain, and the path forward unclear.

From the moment students arrive, the program nudges them toward interaction. They are encouraged to sit with people they don’t know. They work in teams. They share meals, experiences, and, by the end of the week, reflections.

Even small moments matter. On the first day, one student resisted moving from a table where he sat alone, confident that others would eventually fill the space, and they did. Over the course of the week, LaMotte watched him gradually open up — participating more, volunteering, engaging in ways he hadn’t at the start.

Those shifts, while subtle, are central to the program’s purpose. By the end of the week, 96 percent of participants said they would recommend JUMP-IN to a friend, citing connection and community as key reasons. And perhaps more significantly, 84 percent reported feeling more comfortable reaching out to mentors, advisors, or faculty — a critical step in navigating both academic and career pathways.

Measuring What Matters

By traditional academic standards, a weeklong program like JUMP-IN might be difficult to evaluate. There are no grades, so the metrics that matter are different: curiosity satisfied, realism gleaned. It’s hard to measure some shifts in attitude because they might only appear downstream later — in the form of keeping one’s eyes open more keenly or an increased willingness to make inquiries of someone who does something you just might want to know more about.

At the most immediate level, student feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. In addition to the 96 percent recommendation rate, students reported gains in career clarity, networking skills, and confidence in seeking support.

Thirty-two percent said the program led them to change their academic plans — a striking figure for a cohort just beginning their college journey. Another 38 percent reported feeling better equipped to leverage networks and support systems. Even exposure to research — a domain often reserved for upperclassmen — emerged as a meaningful outcome, with 17 percent of students reporting new experience in that area.

But the longer-term measures may prove even more significant. Tufts plans to track JUMP-IN participants and their progress over time, examining retention rates, academic trajectories, and career outcomes. Do students who participate feel more connected to the institution? Are they more likely to persist, to pivot when needed, to engage with mentors and opportunities? “We want to follow them along their path to figure it out,” LaMotte said. “They were in the JUMP-IN program and were interested in engineering; now they’re in political science. Why did that happen? Without surveying them to death, we would like to determine if JUMP-IN helped them make that change. Did they get support they need to be successful?” 

Lessons from the Pilot

Like any new initiative, JUMP-IN’s first iteration revealed areas for growth. The first was critical: using faculty to design and lead the program. “It took us a minute to figure out that faculty needed to run this and not staff. And once we made that decision, it made more sense because this is their area of expertise. Once we got faculty involved, we were able to really develop programming.” 

The most consistent feedback from students was the need for more unstructured time. The schedule, while engaging, was also intense. By midweek, small signs of fatigue had set in. “It was too structured,” LaMotte said. Future versions of the program will likely include more downtime and social activities — opportunities for students to build relationships outside of formal programming. “We need to give them more time to just connect and be with each other.” 

There were also logistical challenges, from coordinating transportation between campuses to managing meals while the campus is closed. But these are solvable problems, LaMotte noted, and, in some ways, evidence of the program’s scale and ambition.

Demand exceeded expectations, with 124 students applying for 100 spots. Plans are already underway to expand the number of tracks and increase capacity.

Perhaps the most ambitious aspect of JUMP-IN is what comes next. The program is envisioned not as a standalone experience but as the first step in a four-year developmental arc. Tufts plans to introduce sophomore, junior, and senior versions of JUMP-IN, each tailored to students’ evolving needs.

The first-year program focuses on exploration and connection. Future iterations may emphasize deeper skill-building focused on leadership, entrepreneurship, negotiation, navigation, along with civic impact and career development.

“We want it to grow with students,” LaMotte said, “and integrate JUMP-IN into the ethos of the undergraduate experience at Tufts.” 

In that sense, JUMP-IN reflects a broader shift in higher education — from viewing career development as a late-stage concern to embedding it throughout the undergraduate experience.

Capping the week, LaMotte was gratified to find the best evidence of the program’s success: In a session at the end where participants broke into sub-groups to share experiences, there was a buzz of animation in the room as students reflected on: what brought them joy, if their career focus changed, what skills they need to learn next, and how Tufts can further support them. For some, the experience reinforced a sense of purpose. For others, it raised new questions. But for all of them, it transformed an abstract idea — being this thing — into something tangible, complex, and real.

That transformation may be the most valuable outcome of all. Because the goal of programs like JUMP-IN is not to provide answers but to create encounters with possible futures and versions of themselves. In a higher education landscape increasingly defined by uncertainty, that kind of clarity — earned, and personal — may be just what students need to begin.

On a Monday evening in March, a few dozen students at the University of Pennsylvania trickled into a darkened classroom. Their professor, Justin McDaniel, greeted them at the front of the small lecture hall with two reminders: to pass in their phones and pick up the books they’d be reading that night. As the group traded in their tech for texts, McDaniel introduced their first author: Carson McCullers, a literary prodigy who wrote her first masterpiece at 23 and was dead by 50 following lifelong illness and chronic alcoholism. McDaniel said she was his “biggest crush” growing up. 

This is the tenth year that McDaniel, the chair of Penn’s religions department, has taught Existential Despair, a literature course that meets once per week for seven hours straight. Between roughly 5 p.m. and midnight, students typically hear a lecture on that day’s writers before settling in to read a book (or three) about human despair and concluding with group discussion. The lights in the room go off during those 11 p.m. conversations. No devices are allowed, ever. Only McDaniel knows what the reading will be before class starts. The rest can only expect it to be depressing.

Those skeptical that any students would be drawn to this dark experience will be shocked to learn it’s one of the most sought-after classes at Penn. This semester, McDaniel said, he fielded more than 500 requests — 80 more than last year — to fill 45 spots. The course’s general mystique no doubt contributes to its appeal, as would the lack of graded assignments. Arguably the most discussed reason for the class’s success has been its format forcing Gen Zers, with their ever-shrinking attention spans, to “read again.” But the urge to reclaim a childhood love of reading may offer only a partial explanation. By embracing a new and unusual approach to learning, and maybe even living, students are participating in an intensely present and explicit quest for meaning.

Choosing Despair

Students in Existential Despair read provocative texts from around the world and across time periods — from McCullers’ “The Ballad of the Sad Café” to contemporary French novelist Marie NDiaye’s “Self-Portrait in Green” — whose central experiences with despair compel readers to turn inward. In contemplating characters’ struggles with isolation, anxiety, and grief, McDaniel’s students end up questioning what they themselves want from this short and often cruel life. What really matters to them? And who do they want to be?

When he first started teaching Existential Despair, McDaniel was already well aware of young people’s hunger for meaning. For one, he’d devoted part of his own 20s to living in remote Thailand as a Buddhist monk. More recently, over the last 24 years and across three universities, he’s taught another unconventional but highly popular course, Living Deliberately, which is an introduction to monasticism. In addition to weekly lectures, the class requires students adopt certain elements of the ascetic lifestyle, like waking up at 5:30 a.m. and adhering to restrictions in their dress, drinking, and communication. For one month, they make a vow of silence, meaning no speaking or technology use whatsoever.

The last time McDaniel ran Living Deliberately, there were 200 people vying for 14 openings. He characterized the applicants as typically non-religious but envious of those who are, and looking for “something real and something dedicated” to guide their lives. “In a chaotic world, in a very highly competitive world,” McDaniel said, “students often seek order; they seek predictability.” 

Young people don’t want to simply settle for a fate that’s defined by “joining this club, aiming for this promotion, deciding on the Lexus versus the Acura.”

Increasingly, students’ reasons for enrolling in Existential Despair seem to mirror those for Living Deliberately. In the beginning, McDaniel said, he chalked up the interest in Despair mostly to its “weird and cool” structure — the midnight meetings, the lack of syllabus or tests or papers. But lately, he’s noticed a particular drive among students to be better read and to get off their screens. They seem eager for a new and more purposeful way of engaging with the world. 

Kayla, a senior taking Existential Despair this semester, said she was first pulled toward the class because it was as different a learning experience as she could imagine. With an eye toward her impending graduation, the engineering major had been feeling herself “grinding away” and wondering whether there wasn’t more she might want from her life. For the last year and a half, she’s gone as far as to embark on what she called a “personal crusade,” trying to rediscover old hobbies, including reading, and reduce her technology dependency. “Just because school is a little soul crushing,” she said. She’s just recently traded in her iPhone for a flip phone. 

Existential despair, as a phenomenon, is one way of framing this kind of restlessness with the status quo. We all confront the precarity of our mortality at some point, McDaniel said, adding that Buddhists believe life is just a series of distractions to avoid that most fundamental and disturbing truth. “Because we know it’s just getting up, eating, and going to sleep. We kind of know it,” McDaniel said. “And that’s why we’re desperate for gossip or we’re desperate for award shows.”

But the Kaylas of the world aren’t ready to cede their lives to the distractions. She, like many of McDaniel’s students, would rather pull back the curtain on the darkness of being alive and learn to sit with those feelings. Because, however unsettling, wading in promises something elusively more meaningful than turning away. Especially as they move further into adulthood, McDaniel said, young people don’t want to simply settle for a fate that’s defined by “joining this club, aiming for this promotion, deciding on the Lexus versus the Acura.”

Technology is of course one of the most obvious distractions for college students. And with the rise of A.I., they’re seeing the online universe expand at the same time that it seems to be becoming less trustworthy. “I’m not disturbed because I don’t trust it at all,” McDaniel said of the internet. “But they actually do trust it. And so for them, it’s like you’re taking away the world.” That’s part of the reason he thinks they want to invest more in their physical reality. “I think it’s really, really hard on them, and they’re craving, craving for something genuine.”

At Penn specifically, many who come into McDaniel’s class are also contending with the weight of an omnipresent achievement culture. Kayla spent the last four years devoted to her studies and chasing success in preparation for a career she isn’t sure will make her happy anymore. Grace Burke, a current first-year in Existential Despair, had been struggling to adapt to what she called Penn’s East Coast focus on “what you do,” as opposed to her own Mid-Western mindset that prioritizes “who you are.” In her first semester, she was rejected from all the extracurriculars she hoped to join and watched as her nice new friends seemed to be consistently more successful. “I just was very confused — found myself very lost — in what’s important about my identity in a very new place and environment,” she said. She’d started to question whether she was even at the right school.

Finding Humanity

In many ways, Justin McDaniel could be a character in one of the novels he teaches, starting with the fact that he’s, well, complicated. At first glance, his all-black uniform, resistance to eye-contact, and intense intellectuality might make him seem the quintessential brooding Ivy League philosopher. But as is so often the case, there’s more to uncover from there. His office door, for example, is the only one in its hallway covered in a colorful smattering of sticky notes, printed-out poems, even an endearing meme. Inside, his space overflows with floor-to-ceiling books and art. As a lecturer, he walks around the room engaging his audience in an excitable manner that often involves cursing about authors and/or students. “I see blank faces,” he said after introducing one writer in particular. “Oh fuck. Oh my fucking God. I’m about to get so angry.” He wasn’t, really.

For some, McDaniel’s unapologetic, unfiltered way of being and teaching is refreshing; for others, it’s off-putting. In Existential Despair, his irreverent commentary tended to elicit chuckles from his audience that sounded torn between entertained and uncomfortable. “I think he’s a very controversial person in general,” Grace said. For her, McDaniel was a main draw to the class because he struck her from the beginning as a professor worth learning from. “He’s very flawed, and we all are, but he’s very candid about it. And I think he would like to show us authors and people who are also very flawed and also very candid.” 

Several students commented on how McDaniel’s authenticity helps build an environment where everyone can let their guard down — where there’s not as much pressure to be or act the smartest. In interviews with course applicants, for example, he doesn’t seem interested in assessing their intellectual prowess. Instead, he asks them to create a drawing based on a poem he reads to them or to write a poem on the spot themselves. The general unpredictability of the class — the fact that students don’t know what they’ll be reading — also means they couldn’t prepare if they wanted to. They just have to be. Sometimes McDaniel makes other changes without notice. Once he held the entire session in silence. Another class they spent in a cemetery.

The books, though, are the primary teacher in this course. McDaniel’s bet is that by delving into the experiences of some of the most troubled characters in some of the darkest literature, students will gain perspective on themselves and the world. He’s not suggesting that the novels or authors he selects offer good life advice, just that there’s insight to be found in the human condition. “You learn from when things go wrong, and that’s what good fiction will give you. Film does it well, too, and music does it well. Art does it well. So it doesn’t matter the medium as much. It matters that it’s complex and thoughtful.” 

In McDaniel’s world, the places young people typically seek guidance — like their friends or the internet — will simply never measure up to the wisdom of a whole human history’s worth of art and literature. “I have no idea why you would spend $92,000 in tuition to get life advice from another 19-year-old,” he said. A similar way of thinking can apply to online content. “I can’t trust a video I see on the internet, but I can trust James Baldwin,” he said. “I mean, Somerset Maugham or Sheila Heti on relationships is much better than any junk advice you would get in the manosphere. It’s just better advice, even though it’s a hundred years old.”

“I can’t trust a video I see on the internet, but I can trust James Baldwin.”

Grace said one of her favorite reads in the class so far has been “In Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept” by the poet Elizabeth Smart. (Others mentioned “The Passion According to G.H.” by Clarice Lispector, “The Book of Illusions” by Paul Auster, and “A Sheltering Sky” by Paul Bowles.) In “Grand Central Station,” Smart details her obsession with her lover and fellow poet George Barker, with whom she had four children but never married. In total, he had 15 children with four different women, just one of whom was his wife. “It kind of knocks you flat, in terms of who are you to judge?” Grace said of Smart’s book. “She really committed to a path that she felt was right, and she carried that conviction every single day. And there’s just this sort of unwavering intensity to the book that I find really compelling.”

One common outcome for students in the class seems to be a sense of gratitude. For senior Gabe Agüero, the breadth of new experiences and perspectives he’s been exposed to have opened up a range of new possibilities to think about when it comes to his own life. Studying finance and A.I. at the Wharton School, Gabe had been accustomed to defining himself based on the career path, and ideally success, he was headed towards. “This is almost making me realize that there’s more to life and there’s more to appreciate,” he said. “It just kind of made me think more about what do I want for my life? And I still don’t have that answer, but it’s definitely making me reconsider, and it’s allowing me to see what I want my life to be in a completely new lens.”

For the most part, McDaniel said, he has no interest in what, precisely, his students learn. “I have no learning goals. I’m consciously against them,” he explained. Instead of outcomes, he’s focused on the learning process. That’s what education is all about, he insists. “It is about complexity. It is about negative capabilities. It is this conscious and unforgiving and unapologetic exploration of things we don’t know and the desire to keep unknowing.” 

At the same time, McDaniel does have a vision whereby his middle-aged, former students better withstand their inevitable struggles. “I want my students, when they’re 45 or 55, when they’re dealing with a lot of these really existential problems, not to turn towards bourbon or hitting their spouse or screaming at their kids or storming out of a job or getting addicted to opiates,” he said. He imagines when they end up dealing with life’s least comfortable moments, his students might turn to books, or other resources, to move forward.

The most paradoxical aspect of McDaniel’s course may be that the distressing material his students read isn’t making them prone to hopelessness, or worse, defeatism. The effect is quite the opposite. “Some of the books we’ve read are quite disturbing in really sad ways. I’ve cried at some of the books,” Kayla said. “But no, I don’t find it depressing at all, and I don’t know if anyone actually does.” 

“I leave each class either reflective and pensive, or happy.”

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

Happiness today is most often associated with comfort, or momentary pleasure, but our founders envisioned something very different when they drafted the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, “the pursuit of happiness” may be the most misunderstood phrase in the national vocabulary. 

As we approach our 250th anniversary as a country, a new course at Arizona State University aims to clarify the term “happiness” and, in doing so, remind us of the virtuous ideals on which our nation was founded. “What the Founders Meant by Happiness: A Journey Through Virtue and Character” is a partnership between A.S.U. and the National Constitution Center, and course co-creators Ted Cross of A.S.U. and Jeffrey Rosen, the center’s C.E.O. emeritus.  

Based on Rosen’s book, “The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America,” the course explores how the study of classical virtue shaped the founders’ understanding of happiness, character, and civic duty. But in creating the course, Rosen and Cross hoped to do far more than correct an interpretation that has been misconstrued over time. The course engages students in getting to know our founding fathers and mothers who, despite their flaws, made the pursuit of virtue something that would guide the growth of the country.  

The course’s title, “What the Founders Meant by Happiness,” is revealed in the first part of the course, stemming directly from Rosen’s body of work as a constitutional scholar. “The founder’s happiness did not mean ‘feeling good,’ but ‘being good’ — not the pursuit of immediate pleasure, but the pursuit of long-term virtue — meaning self-mastery, character improvement, and lifelong learning,” Rosen said. 

The course draws reflection from learners about how the original meaning of happiness can be held for individuals and society today. 

“We hope that students and learners become reflective on not only what happiness means to them but which of those values and virtues they would like to adopt in their own lives and what implications that may have on how we interact with one another,” said Ted Cross, who leads Principled Innovation,a character education initiative at A.S.U. that places character and virtue at the center of decision-making. 

The open access, online course has 12 modules and is currently available at A.S.U. without credit (though Cross hopes that will change over time) and on the National Constitution Center’s website. Those who complete all 12 modules receive a certificate. The co-creators describe the course as “providing a framework to cultivate civic identity and character at scale, modeling how institutions can democratize character education while reinforcing civic flourishing.”

Rosen said the aim of this course is to shed light on a critical pillar of our democracy: holding dear a common understanding of what it is we stand for.

The second part of the course revisits the founders’ stories — from Thomas Jefferson to Benjaman Franklin to Phyllis Wheatley — revealing their moral sources for recovering happiness as the pursuit of virtue and self-control. Key to this telling is their humanness in borrowing their insights from philosophers like Aristotle and Cicero and their admission that their quest for moral fortitude often eluded them. It was the pursuit that mattered most. Explained in this context, Cross said, the content becomes relatable. 

While it stands on its own from a content perspective, the course itself reinforces the missions of both its founding organizations. As part of A.S.U.’s Principled Innovation, it fits nicely within the character education framework, which has been adopted by A.S.U. President Michael Crow as a foundational design aspiration of the university. The school is promoting the course not just to students but to educators at A.S.U. Prep, the university’s preparatory charter school, and other K-12 educators. 

As the nation’s only institution dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding of the constitution, the National Constitution Center has been marketing the course throughout the country, hoping to attract students and life -long learners alike to engage with all or some of the modules. The course is the latest addition to the center’s growing suite of educational resources initiated by Rosen when he was the president and C.E.O. 

Rosen said the aim of this course is to shed light on a critical pillar of our democracy: holding dear a common understanding of what it is we stand for.

“People should think as they will and speak as they will, but we need models to inspire us,” Rosen said. “We need exemplars. Without a consensus about our heroes, it’s difficult to invite people to envision happiness in this once familiar but now forgotten way.”

The course underscores another important tenant of democracy in America by examining the juxtaposition of freedom and self-control, once again illustrated through the intentions and practices of our founders. “I’ve always believed that democracy depends on political self-government,” Cross said. “Our founders set up a system that has many degrees of freedom, but it depends on individual citizens being able to manage themselves and interact with each other in virtuous ways.”  

The course was launched in February 2026, and the response thus far has been positive, in part due to an engaging storytelling format (a hook Cross said was intentional for younger learners). But time will tell if deeper meaning about virtue and self-control will come through for a generation often criticized as being isolated and self-absorbed. The co-creators believe the lack of moral exemplars this generation has experienced, both in popular culture and leadership, may actually increase the course’s appeal. 

“We know that young people want to be happy,” said Cross, who has taught courses in positive psychology. “My contention is if you learn to be good, you will also feel good, that there is a root to feeling good that comes through character development, purpose, and meaning.” 

Rosen agrees and sees the course as an example of a renaissance of character education in the U.S. 

 “We’ve had a tremendous reaction to the course thus far and we are hoping that this will be part of the movement for the cultivation of virtue that is increasingly strong in America today,” Rosen said. “There’s a hunger for this right now in this country.” 

You can reach LearningWell Editor Marjorie Malpiede at mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

Julia entered college in 2023 pretty sure of two things: that she wanted to major in either art history or French and that she wanted to study abroad. At the time, her dream career involved working in and around museums. 

Now a junior, she is majoring in both French and art, but considers her third major, business, her “primary field” — and sees going into finance a means to all her desired ends. She regrets that study abroad is no longer in the cards, collateral damage in the struggle to meet strenuous requirements for all three departments. 

“One day when I exit the corporate world and I’ve made enough money, I would love to use my business skills and connections in the art world and be able to travel,” Julia said. “When I got on campus, I started to appreciate that there’s a difference between the things you want to do and the things you actually do so you can someday work in the things you want to do.” 

Her calculation reflects a broader shift taking place on college campuses across the country. The rising number of students pursuing double majors — and sometimes triple majors — has increased five-fold at some universities, as students strive to differentiate themselves in a competitive job market and hedge against an uncertain economic future.

But as students stack credentials, advisors and mental health professionals are raising questions about what may be lost in the process: not only balance and wellbeing but also the exploratory, formative aspects of college that can shape a life and career in less easily quantifiable ways.

The Credentials Arms Race

Some observers note what they call a “credential arms race,” the growth of students accumulating academic achievements to remain competitive. 

Data from colleges across the U.S. suggest that the share of students graduating with more than one major has risen significantly over the past decade. Reporting by The Hechinger Report has documented a wide spectrum of increases: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has seen a 20% increase; Brown University, 97%; Harvard, 334%; and Drexel, a 591% increase.

Administrators acknowledge the trend is part of a broader socio-economic picture: students worrying about job prospects and attempting to increase their career viability and areas of expertise. Students often frame the decision pragmatically; in an era of economic volatility, rising tuition costs, and rapid technological change, pursuing multiple fields of study can feel like a form of risk management.

In an era of economic volatility, rising tuition costs, and rapid technological change, pursuing multiple fields of study can feel like a form of risk management.

But advisors say the motivations are varied, and evolving. Today’s students are navigating a labor market shaped by automation, shifting industry demands, and heightened expectations around early career readiness. Many feel pressure to demonstrate both specialization and versatility at the same time — a challenging balance for anyone, let alone someone still discovering their intellectual interests. And as college costs skyrocket, many feel pressure to make a degree, or degrees, matter as much as they can.

“There’s a sense that students want to keep as many doors open as possible,” said Nigel Richardson, the assistant provost for university advising and student success at the University of Florida. Richardson said he and colleagues increasingly hear from students who arrive on campus already planning to double major or add multiple credentials. “A lot of students are thinking more means better,” he said. “If I have more credentials, that’s going to make me more competitive.” 

Hedging Bets in an Uncertain Economy

Students’ motivations for stacking majors are often deeply pragmatic. Many are aware that the labor market they enter after graduation may look quite different from the one that existed even a decade earlier. News headlines regularly discuss artificial intelligence, layoffs in once-stable industries, and the possibility that workers may hold many different roles over the course of their careers.

Even when students don’t explicitly cite A.I., advisors say the broader sense of uncertainty influences how they approach their education. Richardson noted that students are increasingly thinking strategically about how their academic choices position them for employment. Some combine technical and non-technical fields, pairing disciplines like data science with psychology, economics with public policy, or business with the arts. 

“Students are thinking about covering bases, but they aren’t fully aware of the costs,” Richardson said. “It’s this desire for more, and their answer — in this environment that they’re in and paying for — is another academic program.”

Alyssa, a sophomore at a highly competitive school in the northeast, has always found child studies fascinating. She speaks eloquently about her fascination with what makes children tick and evolve while maximizing their potential. Working with a nonprofit dedicated to the wellbeing of under-resourced children, she said, has always been her passion. But not her current path.

“I always knew I wanted to have a corporate moment first — to have a sustainable lifestyle — and later, after I’ve been a corporate strategy expert, I can segue into being the head of a nonprofit for children, get globally involved. I’m passionate about that work, but I’m more passionate right now about being corporate first because that’s going to make my life way easier to support in the long run.” 

She applied to college with child development as her intended major, knowing it was a less-competitive route into that school. Once she was accepted, she set the groundwork to add a major in business and set her sights on pursuing consulting firms. She just completed a career fair in New York to be introduced to the Big Four, an opportunity she secured by getting involved with her school’s career office early in her first year. 

“You have to do all these things because everyone else is doing all these things. It’s not enough to be a double major. You also have to be in the business frat — which I didn’t get into, after trying three semesters — and minor in Chinese or math or data science and have extra-curricular leadership. Everyone’s just generating anxiety,” Alyssa said. The competitive campus environment she describes is one where students are running on all cylinders to be and do everything, realizing that academic credentials alone may not be sufficient to secure employment. Energy and commitment might be the most valuable resources of all. “You have to be really intentional with your time,” she said. “You can’t risk not succeeding in a course, not graduating on time.” 

When Efficiency Meets Opportunity

Clearly, not all students double major expressly out of fear of job competition and instability. Many are making room for two strong interests. Some have the advantage of arriving on campus with significant numbers of Advanced Placement or dual-enrollment credits. This allows them to fulfill general education requirements quickly — and puts them on an efficient path, if they choose to maximize the use of credits towards multiple credentials for the same time and cost. Others benefit from financial aid structures that cover a set number of credits, encouraging them to maximize the academic opportunities included in that tuition.

In such cases, adding another major can appear to be an efficient use of resources. Students may reason that if they are already enrolled full-time, pursuing an additional field of study adds value without increasing cost. It’s just slicing and dicing your time in a focused way. Some institutions have also designed interdisciplinary programs that make double majoring cover even more ground. 

But efficiency can come with tradeoffs. Richardson introduces students to the idea of a “T-shaped” education — one that combines breadth across disciplines with depth in a particular area of expertise. He cautions that pursuing breadth can sometimes come “at the expense of depth,” limiting opportunities for sustained research engagement or deeper learning within a primary field. The major itself is only one piece of the professional profile, he stresses, along with research, volunteering, and shadowing, all part of a holistic experience. 

“If you’re not going deeper into a topic, you’re not increasing your level of understanding or opportunities for hands-on expertise or fruitful relationships with faculty and classmates. Students might think it’s going to make them more competitive. But they could miss that meaningful engagement that’s expected within each of these respective departments in their pursuit of this double or triple major.”

The Stress of Optimizing

Completing multiple majors calls for careful academic planning — timing when required courses are offered — and a willingness to take on heavy course loads. Students may need to coordinate requirements across departments, enroll in classes offered only once per year, and forgo scheduling flexibility.

Kirsten Behling, the associate dean of student accessibility and academic resources at Tufts University, said her office frequently works with students managing the demands of double majors or combinations of majors and minors.

“Students are generally a little bit overwhelmed with the amount of content that they have to cover and how tricky it is to organize getting into the courses you need when they’re offered,” she said. “With multiple majors, they hit the burnout button earlier. They may think they’re doing O.K., until they aren’t.”

“With multiple majors, they hit the burnout button earlier. They may think they’re doing O.K., until they aren’t.”

Academic coaching services can help students develop time management strategies and adjust expectations when workloads become difficult to sustain. Behling noted that students sometimes feel locked into rigid academic pathways once they commit to multiple programs or realize they have to miss out on certain options. The inability to participate in study abroad or other experiential learning opportunities can be a significant loss, she added, given the role such experiences play in developing independence, cultural competence, and professional skills.

Missing out on options also has a very everyday component: just plain missing out on hanging out. Mental health professionals find that heavy academic loads can reduce the time students have for social interaction, exercise, and rest.

Eric Wood, the director of counseling and mental health at Texas Christian University, said it is logical that students taking on multiple majors feel the weight of increased demands on their time.

“If you’re doing double majoring, you’re doing more courses,” he said. “You have more demand from faculty, more demand from coaches, and less time socially — even less if you also are holding a part-time job.” Wood said concerns about the job market are common among college students, particularly graduating seniors. “I think it’s only natural that they are absorbing what they hear and read about the economy and job market and A.I. and doing everything they can to protect themselves. But sometimes you don’t realize that frantic protection isn’t actually protecting you.”

When students respond to that anxiety by seeking ways to strengthen their academic profile, counselors try to gently remind them that additional coursework is not the only or best path to career readiness. “Some advisors encourage students to consider whether adding another major will genuinely support their goals or simply add pressure,” Wood said.

A Narrowing of the College Experience? 

College has traditionally been framed as a time for intellectual exploration and personal development, as well as career preparation. But students may feel pressure to optimize every aspect of their academic trajectory, leaving less time for activities that contribute to broader growth. Networking events, internships, leadership roles, and collaborative projects often require time flexibility that becomes harder to maintain alongside dense academic schedules.

Behling observes that many students increasingly approach higher education with a highly instrumental mindset. “There’s definitely a ‘means to an end’ mentality,” she said. “I have to do this thing that looks good in order to get this job or this graduate school entry, and sometimes this is emphasized by family, too. If the Tufts experience becomes a means to an end, it’s less about the collegiate, holistic experience — which is something I really believe in — and more the drive, drive, drive to get to the other side of graduation.”

Students are doing what they think they need to do to get a job, Behling said. But that perception may not always reflect employer expectations. Advisors often emphasize that internships, research experience, and interpersonal skills play a significant role in hiring decisions.

Richardson encourages students to ask why they want multiple majors and what they hope those additional programs will accomplish. A second major can contribute to intellectual growth, he advises, but it is not the only way to demonstrate versatility. Often, he finds that students are motivated less by curiosity than by a desire to reduce uncertainty. 

“Oftentimes when I’m having this conversation, what comes out is risk management: ‘I have to have the funds; I have to make sure the doors are opened.’ I often don’t hear much about intellectual exploration, and I try to find ways to help them remain curious,” he said. “There are many different ways to approach their preparation to graduate, which could include multiple majors, but there might be other skills and personal attributes that end up mattering a lot more.”

A Recalibration of Success

The rise of double and triple majors suggests that students are responding actively to changing expectations about education and employment. Yet advisors emphasize that academic credentials represent only one dimension of readiness. Relationships, experiences, and intellectual curiosity often shape opportunities in ways that transcripts alone cannot capture.

The challenge for students — and for institutions — may be finding ways to support ambition without sacrificing wellbeing or the broader developmental value of the college experience. Meaningful one-on-one conversations with influential faculty advisors can help. But it’s more easily done in the context of a larger culture shift. In an arms race, it’s hard to unilaterally walk away.

“I do think I do a pretty good job trying to be in the present and appreciate where I am. I love my school. It feels like home, and I love spending time kicking back with my friends,” Alyssa said. “But then I look around at what everyone else is doing, and I feel so dumb that I’m not doing more. It’s just so much harder than I thought.”

University of Washington professor Elizabeth Kirk regularly arrives early to her introduction to nutrition class and stands outside the lecture hall to welcome her students inside — all 500 of them. She also grants every student email a personal response, reflecting a philosophy that the essential transaction of higher education is the connection between instructors and students.

But lately, Kirk has watched her students become increasingly withdrawn and has been eager to try out new ways to engage them. A recently launched, interdisciplinary initiative at U.W., called Five for Flourishing, wants to help. 

In 2024, a team of U.W. administrators spanning student and academic affairs developed Five for Flourishing to guide faculty members like Kirk in the implementation of strategies to promote connection in the biggest classes across the university’s three campuses. 

The strategies are: adding language to class syllabi that expresses support for student wellbeing; setting up a slide before each class offering wellness resources or prompting students to engage with one another; reminding students before major assignments that they are opportunities to grow rather than reflections of intelligence; organizing small student groups that meet weekly; and instituting mid-quarter evaluations for students to offer feedback on the course.

Taken together, the strategies mean to improve wellbeing by cutting through the feelings of anonymity that can run rampant in huge classes. The interventions set the precedent that professors want to connect with students and care about their personal and academic success. The intended outcomes — sense of belonging, classroom engagement, and intellectual risk-taking, among others — are those often associated with smaller courses and more intimate faculty-student dynamics.

Part wellness intervention, part student success initiative, Five for Flourishing grew out of the needs of several departments. Its dual focus is captured in its interdisciplinary leadership, which includes the provost’s office, the Center for Teaching and Learning, and the U.W. Resilience Lab, a hub for campus wellbeing efforts.

The interventions set the precedent that professors want to connect with students and care about their personal and academic success.

According to Penelope Moon, the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, what makes Five for Flourishing unique is the way all five interventions come together, and the unlikely team that assembled them. “The package is an innovation,” she said. “The partnership is an innovation.”

Marisa Nickle, the senior director of strategy and academic initiatives, laid the groundwork for Five for Flourishing. While U.W. staff may be “naturally collaborative,” she said, they tend to be “structurally siloed.” That was a barrier she was prepared to overcome.

With her boss, vice provost for academic and student affairs Philip Reid, Nickle had attended the presentation of another wellbeing initiative that she liked but feared was overly complicated. Curious about how a simpler version could work at U.W., they sought advice from Moon as well as Megan Kennedy, the director of the Resilience Lab, which promotes campus wellbeing through research, education, and strategic programs.  

Kennedy was ready to lend her expertise and welcomed the cross-departmental nature of the initiative. “I think the question universities are trying to answer around mental health is: How do we distribute the responsibility beyond student life and the counseling center and crisis services?” she said.

What many institutions need, Kennedy added, is “a really clear pathway for how everyone can take responsibility.”

But wellbeing interventions in academic spaces are not always easy to implement for time-pressed faculty. Nickle said a major question steering the work was: “How can we bring student success into the classroom and do that in that lightweight way that also thanks faculty for their time and effort?” 

With Kennedy and Moon both on board, and critical support and funding from Vice Provost Reid, the group began to develop an official program, first by deciding on the strategies themselves.  

“It came together fairly quickly,” Moon said. “It was pretty easy to identify the things that probably would help, and then we dug into the literature to confirm suspicions.”

“How can we bring student success into the classroom and do that in that lightweight way that also thanks faculty for their time and effort?” 

Once the five strategies were established, the team turned to enlisting faculty members for a two-year pilot phase of the project, during which educators would institute the interventions in two classes. The recruitment didn’t present much trouble, given plenty of professors, like Kirk, were already interested in incorporating these kinds of learner-centered techniques. 

Not surprisingly, Kirk had been using some of the Five for Flourishing strategies before the program existed. Mid-term evaluations, for example, were standard practice for her and continue to be. She’s long valued how they allow students to feel heard and her to respond to their needs in real time.

Other interventions, though, were new to Kirk, like the “growth-mindset” reminders. It’s another way she’s appreciated being able to establish a rapport with her students. 

“This is just my way of assessing how well I’m getting across to you — how well you are understanding what it is I’m saying,” she now tells her class before tests. “Because if I need to revisit some things, I want to do that.”

While Kirk doesn’t expect one practice to expel her students’ performance anxiety completely, she thinks they appreciate the sentiment. One even wrote in the course feedback that the language “made me feel calmer.”

Samantha Robinson, a professor in the chemistry department, teaches lectures with between 100 and 300 students. The uphill battle is made steeper by chemistry’s reputation as one of the most difficult and demanding subjects. 

“They hear horror stories. They’re under this impression that we’re ‘weed-out’ classes,” Robinson said. “And that isn’t ever our goal.”

In 2025, Robinson started implementing Five for Flourishing in two courses that tend to draw those without strong chemistry backgrounds — those who might feel particularly uncomfortable or nervous about the class.

“Those are really great student populations for this sort of an initiative because they are feeling pretty intimidated to be in a STEM class in a lot of cases,” Robinson said. Five for Flourishing, she hoped, could increase their sense of belonging and support. 

Over time, Robinson determined which elements of the program she found helpful. She likes the syllabus and growth-mindset language and the “moment-to-arrive” slides. The midterm evaluations present more of a challenge because, given the highly structured nature of her courses, she can’t plan to change much about them half-way through the term.

Both Robinson and Kirk came out with mixed reviews of the effort to have students meet weekly in small groups. They know it’s difficult to get students to get together on their own outside of class.

Robinson found that the students in a 120-person course were more likely to meet than those in her 285-person class. Kirk tweaked the structure so that the groups gathered during “quiz sections,” a pre-existing T.A.-led class time. 

More formal assessment of the initiative has also been ongoing since the beginning thanks to the contributions of Lovenoor Aulck, a data scientist working in the provost’s office. 

Aulck developed pre- and post-course surveys to assess the impact of the five interventions on students’ reported sense of belonging, confidence, and academic support, among other measures. Aulck said he’s found “small positive gains,” based on data from the first year of implementation. 

Some of the promising findings include that, by course end, students were more likely to indicate feeling accepted and comfortable being themselves in class and less likely to indicate feeling worried about being judged negatively based on their identity.

But data collection is in its pilot phase as much as the rest of the program; and the Five for Flourishing staff plans to continue tweaking each facet of the work as needed.

That doesn’t mean the program can’t grow at the same time. Already, the group has collaborated with the University of Georgia to help engineer its own version of Five for Flourishing called Wellbeing by Design.  

As the U.W. team monitors their own progress, and swaps stories with partners near and far, perhaps students nationwide will begin to find their big classrooms feel a little smaller.

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.