Belonging is weaker when students feel they must hide part of themselves

By Student Voice AI

Updated Mar 29, 2026

At Student Voice AI, we often see universities ask whether students feel they belong, but much less often whether they can belong without editing themselves to fit in. That is why Anne-Roos Verbree, Ulviye Isik, Marieke F. Van Der Schaaf, Leoniek D. N. V. Wijngaards-De Meij and Gönül Dilaver's Studies in Higher Education paper, "Fitting in, feeling true: student experiences of sense of belonging and authenticity", matters for UK institutions using surveys, focus groups, and open comments to understand student experience. It argues that belonging and authenticity are intertwined, and that student voice becomes more useful when universities listen for both.

Context and research question

Belonging has become a familiar higher education metric, but it is often treated too simply. A dashboard may show whether students report a sense of connection, yet still miss whether they feel able to participate as themselves. That matters in UK higher education because retention, engagement, and inclusion strategies can end up rewarding adaptation rather than identifying where institutional norms are making students self-censor.

Verbree and colleagues set out to explore how undergraduate students experience both belonging and authenticity, what shapes those experiences, and how they change over time. The study took place at a Dutch research university and used semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 21 undergraduates from diverse backgrounds, including variation in gender, disability, religion, ethnicity, parental education, and school. The authors used reflexive thematic analysis with a critical realist approach, which makes this a useful study for understanding mechanisms and lived experience rather than just headline prevalence.

Key findings

The first finding is that belonging and authenticity are not fixed states. Students described them as positive or negative, situational, and often fluctuating over time. That is an important corrective for universities that rely on a single annual score. A student can feel settled in one context, such as a programme or friendship group, and disconnected in another, such as a large lecture or the wider institution.

The second finding is that students' experiences are shaped across multiple levels at once. Personal development, peer relationships, lecturer support, the structure of educational activities, extracurricular involvement, and familiarity with the physical campus all mattered. The paper aligns these influences with a socio-ecological framework, which is useful for UK teams because it stops belonging from being framed as a purely individual problem or a purely social one.

Supportive relationships with peers and lecturers emerged as especially important. The authors note that students often had to actively build those connections, and that strong peer support did not appear automatically. Informal contact outside class, lecturers who "go the extra mile", and spaces where students could interact without high pressure all helped students feel both connected and genuine in their participation.

Educational design also mattered more than many institutions assume. Group size, type of activity, atmosphere, and even knowing the buildings shaped whether students felt at ease. One participant captured the strain of institutional scale clearly:

"Whole uni[versity] are a lot of people... it's just so busy and so hectic."

That is more than a comment about convenience. It shows how campus environment and course structure can directly affect belonging. The paper's practical example, forming smaller groups within larger courses, is therefore not a minor design tweak. It is a way of reducing anonymity and creating settings where students can participate more comfortably.

Most importantly, the paper shows that belonging without authenticity can be misleading. Students may appear engaged while still feeling pressure to conceal parts of their identity, preferences, or background in order to fit prevailing norms. For Student Experience teams, that is a significant insight. A seemingly healthy belonging score can hide a more fragile reality if students are only connected on conditional terms.

Practical implications

First, UK universities should add authenticity to the way they collect and interpret student voice. Instead of asking only whether students feel they belong, use open-text prompts such as: "Where do you feel most able to be yourself on your course?" and "What makes it harder to participate comfortably?" Those questions are more likely to surface pressures that a standard belonging item will miss.

Second, institutions should analyse belonging feedback by context, not just by cohort average. This paper shows that comments about peer groups, lecturer approachability, class format, campus spaces, and extracurricular life may all be belonging evidence. Student Voice Analytics fits naturally here: categorising open comments at scale can help teams distinguish whether a belonging problem is rooted in social connection, educational design, institutional atmosphere, or the pressure to conform.

Third, universities should treat belonging and authenticity as design issues as well as cultural ones. Smaller learning groups, better orientation to spaces and routines, more low-pressure peer contact, and staff behaviours that signal understanding can all make participation easier. If students repeatedly describe having to adapt themselves to fit in, the right response is not to ask them to be more resilient. It is to examine which institutional conditions are making authenticity feel risky.

FAQ

Q: How should universities apply this paper when reviewing belonging feedback?

A: Pair any closed belonging item with one or two open-text questions about authenticity and context. Ask where students feel most comfortable participating, where they feel pressure to adapt, and which course or campus settings help or hinder that. That gives Student Experience teams evidence they can actually act on, rather than a single abstract score.

Q: What are the methodological limits of this study?

A: This is a qualitative study from one Dutch research university with 21 undergraduate participants, so it is not designed to estimate how common each issue is across the sector. Its value lies in explaining how belonging and authenticity are experienced and what shapes them. UK institutions should use it as a framework for interpreting local surveys, focus groups, and comment data, not as a sector benchmark.

Q: What does authenticity add to student voice work that belonging alone does not?

A: Authenticity helps distinguish between students who feel genuinely included and students who are fitting in by suppressing part of themselves. That matters because both groups might look similar in a headline satisfaction or belonging metric. Student voice becomes more informative when institutions can identify where connection is genuine, and where it depends on students adapting to dominant norms.

References

[Paper Source]: Anne-Roos Verbree, Ulviye Isik, Marieke F. Van Der Schaaf, Leoniek D. N. V. Wijngaards-De Meij and Gönül Dilaver "Fitting in, feeling true: student experiences of sense of belonging and authenticity" DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2026.2617126

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