Education concepts for success.
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In 2024, Higher Ed Drive detailed how a credit reporting agency warned that higher education would face significant financial pressures in 2025. Data suggests that these financial pressures have increased beyond what was forecasted. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently released a report suggesting that two-thirds of colleges showed signs of financial stress. Furthermore, last month, BestColleges.com published a tracking system for college closures and mergers. Some might argue that this financial distress reflects negative views about colleges and universities. However, Gallup reported last month that the public trust in higher education has increased for the first time in decades, and that this increase was among college graduates, those without degrees, Democrats, and Republicans.
Public confidence cannot meet financial demands, especially the costs of essential services such as student mental health. Schools are tasked with adopting innovative ways to chart the future, and a prime example is a resource-sharing consortium called MINDful College Connections (MCC). According to the MCC website, current members of this consortium include DePauw University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Saint Mary-Of-The Woods College, and Bulter University. Dr. Curtis Wiseley is the current Executive Director of the MCC, and said the consortium started because there were limited resources and growing demand for well-being services, and individual schools couldn’t keep up. However, Wiseley argued that sharing resources has made a significant impact. He commented, “Together, we have developed a sustainable model of efficiently shared resources to effectively support our students’ mental health needs while also financially benefiting our institutions by leveraging the consortium model to take advantage of economies of scale.”
How The Resource-Sharing Consortium Works
Wiseley explained that the MCC is a separate non-profit organization that was launched by external endowment funding, and that members utilize both a full-time counselor and a mental health wellness educator. According to Wiseley, there’s an operational committee, which includes the counseling directors of each school and determines peak times/situations where one school might need additional resources. For example, if one school is hosting a campus-wide mental health awareness week, the health educators from the other schools will travel to that campus to assist. If there’s a critical incident on a campus, the counselors from the other schools will travel to that campus and provide extra services.
Wisely also explained that the MCC provides significant cost-saving initiatives because it negotiates with vendors as a collective to provide discounted prices on services such as electronic medical records, third-party virtual counseling, and online peer support services. Wiseley further discussed how MCC offers professional development to faculty and staff at each school.
Dr. John Mark Day is the Vice President of Student Affairs at Depauw University, and he shared how the MCC has also fostered a sense of connection between schools. He commented, “Working in a rural institution, you can feel isolated at times, but this provides a connection with other schools, which has been meaningful.”
The Effectiveness Of The Resource-Sharing Consortium
According to Wiseley, the MCC has enabled schools to expand the delivery of clinical and preventive services on their campuses, including most schools eliminating prior waiting lists in their counseling centers. However, Wiseley said that he’s most excited about the effect of MCC on student retention rates. The executive director shared data which indicated a three-year trend of significant decreases in the percentage of total student withdrawals that were due to mental health reasons. He commented, “The MCC member institutions have documented significant increases in student retention following the implementation of MCC’s comprehensive stepped care treatment model to effectively support the mental health and wellness needs of their students.”
The MCC is proving that the concept of resource sharing amongst schools can be effective in building connections, expanding resources, and generating important outcomes. The consortium is open for new members, and Wiseley said that he’s willing to talk with school administrators, and even government officials, about how the MCC works. It’s apparent that resource-sharing can be more of a future model in college mental health to help schools fill in service gaps. As Mark Day stated, “MCC has drastically increased our capacity. For most of the schools, we are in rural locations, and this allows us to provide access to services that we couldn’t otherwise provide.”
