Well-being and student–faculty interactions in higher education

ABSTRACT

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) calls for going beyond the measure of market strength to assess societal progress through a consideration of well-being. Research on college and university student experiences and outcomes can consider students’ well-being as a means of obtaining a fuller understanding of the positive impact of student–faculty interactions. This study uses longitudinal data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education to examine the relationship between five measures of interactions with faculty and students’ end-of-fourth-year psychological well-being in the United States. Results reveal that several measures of student–faculty interaction are positively associated with fourth-year well-being, and that the frequency and perceived quality of those interactions are most salient in terms of students’ well-being gains over four years of college or university. These findings suggest that student–faculty interactions matter in terms of students’ well-being, in turn making it important for faculty and administrators to consider how to prioritize demands on faculty members’ time.

KEYWORDS:

• Faculty
• student experience
• well-being

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a generous grant from the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College to the Center for Research on Undergraduate Education at The University of Iowa.