Counselling centre heads lose jobs in restructuring drive

With student mental health remaining a top concern for US colleges and universities, institutions are looking for innovative ways to provide students with the care they need. Some have removed caps on how many counselling sessions students can attend; others have enlisted faculty to aid in the battle, writes Johanna Alonso for Inside Higher Ed.

Still others – including Wright State, as well as Texas A&M University and the University of Kentucky – are completely restructuring their counselling centres in an attempt to find a model that will allow students to access more timely, frequent and effective mental health care on campus. According to Marcus Hotaling, president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, at least 10 universities, including Wright State, have removed their counselling centre directors in the past year.

“[These institutions] have basically said, ‘We’re going to move in a different direction,’ and they’ve basically put counselling under health services or [another] realignment and then gotten rid of the counselling centre director,” he said. In some cases, the counselling centre director position has been eliminated entirely; in others, the role has been revised to better fit a new vision of campus health services that often encompasses or outsources psychological services. These changes may also end up saving some institutions money, sources say.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site