Academic stress is the strongest university-related distress signal
Updated Aug 20, 2026
Universities cannot treat student distress as something counselling services alone must absorb. In a national survey of 19,057 Australian undergraduates, academic stress accounted for almost all the distress variance explained by six measured university experiences. That is why Angus Gilmore, Tracii Ryan, Chenhao Liang and Chi Baik's Studies in Higher Education paper, "Who experiences university as most challenging to mental health and wellbeing? Insights from a national survey of Australian undergraduates", matters for UK universities building joined-up wellbeing and student feedback systems. It shifts the practical question from who is struggling to which parts of university life may be contributing, and which of those institutions can change.
Context and research question
Student mental health and wellbeing are closely tied to engagement, continuation, and academic success. Yet demographic gaps do not tell universities whether poorer outcomes arise mainly from factors beyond the institution or from the way different students experience workload, teaching, peers, belonging, course value, and university climate. Without that distinction, universities risk directing every response towards individual support while leaving avoidable pressures in course and institutional design untouched.
Gilmore and colleagues examined data collected between 2023 and 2025 from undergraduates at 16 Australian universities, split evenly between metropolitan and regional institutions. The survey measured distress with the Kessler-6 scale, wellbeing with the Flourishing Scale, and six aspects of university experience: academic stress, peer engagement, belonging, teacher support, course value, and university climate. The authors first compared demographic groups, then used mediation models to test whether differences in those university experiences statistically accounted for part of the differences in mental health and wellbeing. The mediation analysis included 17,887 complete responses.
The Australian setting is not a direct proxy for UK higher education, but the institutional levers are familiar. Workload, assessment pressure, course value, peer connection, teaching support, and climate all appear in UK student surveys and open comments. The study therefore offers UK Student Experience, EDI, and Quality teams a useful framework for separating population-level risk from aspects of university life that may be open to reform.
Key findings
Academic stress was the dominant university-related predictor of distress. A quarter of respondents, 25.3%, exceeded the threshold for clinically relevant distress. After demographic factors were controlled, the six university experiences accounted for 32% of variation in distress and 33% in wellbeing. Academic stress had by far the strongest unique association with distress, with a standardised coefficient of .53. In a separate calculation, academic stress alone accounted for 33.8% of distress variance, compared with 35.6% for all six experiences together.
"positive university resources (e.g. peer engagement, sense of belonging) appear to have relatively limited capacity to offset the ‘emotional cost’ of academic stress"
Positive experiences still mattered, but more clearly for wellbeing than for distress. Academic stress and course value were the strongest predictors of wellbeing, followed by peer engagement and belonging. This distinction matters. Universities should continue to invest in connection, supportive teaching, and a positive climate, but the findings suggest these resources cannot compensate fully for excessive, unclear, or poorly justified academic demands.
Students with disability and LGBTQIA+ students reported both poorer outcomes and less supportive university experiences. University experiences statistically accounted for about half of the mental health and wellbeing difference between students with and without disability, and roughly one-third of the difference between LGBTQIA+ and non-LGBTQIA+ students. Academic stress explained most of these indirect effects. Lower peer engagement was especially relevant for students with disability, while course value and university climate also mattered for LGBTQIA+ students. This complements research showing why disabled students' experiences cannot be understood through adjustments in isolation.
Female-identifying students' higher distress was also closely tied to academic stress. Once university experiences were included, female-identifying status no longer had a significant direct association with distress. Greater academic stress accounted for 94% of the mediated pathway in this comparison. The result does not mean gender itself is unimportant. It suggests that institutions should investigate how workload, assessment pressure, confidence, and expectations are experienced across groups rather than treating the gap as fixed.
Demographic labels did not produce a simple hierarchy of risk. International students reported more supportive university climates and stronger peer engagement, although lower course value. First-generation status was linked to slightly greater distress, but not lower wellbeing, while Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander status was not associated with worse outcomes in this dataset. The useful lesson is caution: demographic assumptions should guide questions, not predetermine conclusions.
Practical implications
UK universities should first audit academic stress as a design issue. Programme teams can review workload bunching, assessment volume, unclear criteria, avoidable time demands, and whether students understand the learning purpose behind difficult tasks. Pairing curriculum data with student feedback can show whether pressure comes from necessary challenge or preventable friction. This gives Quality teams a concrete route from a wellbeing signal to course-level action.
Second, institutions should analyse differences within as well as between demographic groups. Headline averages can hide whether disabled students are describing workload, access, peer isolation, or repeated administrative effort, while LGBTQIA+ students may be responding to climate, course value, or academic pressure in different combinations. Small groups require careful disclosure controls and cautious interpretation, but a more granular view helps institutions target the part of the experience they can change.
Third, universities should pair validated scales with open-text questions that explain the mechanism. A distress or wellbeing score shows the size of a problem, not whether students are struggling with workload, assessment clarity, teacher support, peer connection, or institutional climate. A reproducible NSS open-text analysis methodology can help teams classify those explanations consistently across surveys and years. Student Voice Analytics fits here by comparing recurring comment themes across cohorts and demographics, giving institutions a more specific basis for intervention.
Finally, teams should treat mediation as a prompt for local testing, not proof of causation. This was a cross-sectional, self-report study, institutional response rates ranged from below 1% to 19.3%, and some demographic groups were under-represented. Universities should test the same pathways in local data, combine quantitative and qualitative evidence, and monitor whether changes to assessment, workload, support, or climate are followed by better student experience. That produces a stronger decision trail than assuming an association identifies the cause.
FAQ
Q: How can a university apply these findings to its own wellbeing or student experience surveys?
A: Keep a stable, validated measure of distress or wellbeing, then add focused questions on academic stress, course value, peer engagement, belonging, teacher support, and university climate. Include an open-text prompt asking what has most increased or reduced pressure. Analyse the results by relevant student groups with privacy safeguards, assign each recurring issue to an owner, and track whether action changes the pattern in later feedback.
Q: Does the mediation analysis show that university experiences cause poorer mental health?
A: No. The data were collected at one point in time, so the analysis cannot establish causal direction. Distress may also shape how students interpret academic stress and other experiences. The results show plausible, statistically supported pathways that institutions should investigate locally, not proof that changing one survey measure will produce a particular mental health outcome.
Q: What does this study change about student voice on wellbeing?
A: It shows why student voice should connect wellbeing evidence to the design of study, not sit only with counselling or support services. When students describe pressure, isolation, weak course value, or an unsupportive climate, they are identifying parts of university life that academic and professional teams may be able to change. Used carefully, those accounts can turn a broad wellbeing concern into a shared institutional responsibility.
References
[Paper Source]: Angus Gilmore, Tracii Ryan, Chenhao Liang and Chi Baik "Who experiences university as most challenging to mental health and wellbeing? Insights from a national survey of Australian undergraduates" DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2026.2718479
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