Understanding Loneliness on College Campuses: A Conversation with Dr. Jill Fleuriet

According to the Healthy Minds Study, the largest ongoing national survey of U.S. college student mental health, roughly half of college students report feeling significantly lonely. That number has held steady even as campuses invest more than ever in mental health resources, and even as other measures of student wellbeing have actually improved. To get more perspective on this issue, we spoke with someone who could speak to it from different angles.

Dr. Jill Fleuriet is a cultural and medical anthropologist who spent her career studying human connection and now leads a campus full of young people navigating that exact transition as the President of Salem Academy and College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Before Salem, she spent years in higher education leadership, most recently as Vice Provost for Honors Education at The University of Texas at San Antonio.

The Cost of Loneliness Project sat down with her this summer to talk about why loneliness has become such a persistent part of the college experience, and what parents and students can do about it.

National surveys suggest roughly half of college students report significant loneliness, even at a moment when campuses have more mental health resources than ever before. As someone who spent years studying human connection as an anthropologist before stepping into college leadership, does that number surprise you, or does it match what you're actually seeing on campus?

Dr. Fleuriet: "It matches what I've seen, and it doesn't surprise me. As a cultural anthropologist, I think about what is fundamental to the human condition: being in the physical presence of others, feeling like you belong and matter within a group, and caring for one another.

"We're built to be in community, recognized and valued. We're also built to adapt, but that doesn’t mean that ability always serves us well. During COVID, part of how we adapted was retreating from physical presence and connection, and technology imperfectly stood in for a lot of that. It helped in real ways. It also built silos.

"Moving to college after graduating from high school, or returning to it as an older student, is a major dislocation. Everything that used to be automatic becomes a decision. Where do I get food? Where do I walk? Where do I park? Those are normal stressors of relocating, and loneliness is part of that. Everything seems foreign, disconnected from what you have known. Researchers have called it adjustment loneliness. What we have to watch for is when adjustment loneliness turns into something more persistent."

Here's something interesting in the data. Anxiety and depression among students have actually been trending down over the last few years, but chronic loneliness hasn't followed that same pattern. It's stayed stubbornly flat. Why do you think loneliness is proving so much harder to shift than those other measures?

Dr. Fleuriet: "I don't have a definitive answer, and I think that's worth saying honestly. Surveys and one-time interviews are a good starting point, but they only tell us what people say they believe, where they are in that moment in time. We also need to understand what students actually do and the experiences they have over time, which means talking with them and being with them during their day-to-day more than once. We're also still seeing the tail end of what I'd call the COVID kids, who had to use social media to connect and, by extension, used it to try and cope - and we know that if someone is already feeling poorly, social media tends to make it worse, not just through the content itself, but because time spent on a device is most often time not spent connecting.

"But the piece I keep coming back to is that connection isn't only about whether you're physically around other people. It's about the quality of that presence. I've talked to plenty of people over the years who've told me they've never felt more lonely than when they were surrounded by their own group. So, it's not just about being in community. It's about how you're in community."

Loneliness doesn't seem to land on every student equally. Are there particular groups, first-generation students, or students under greater financial pressure, for example, who tend to experience it more acutely than their peers, and why do you think that is?

Dr. Fleuriet: "I think about this in two ways. Some students carry vulnerable identities that add extra layers of stress, which makes connection harder to come by. And then there's the reality of holistic wellness. If you're working thirty hours a week, commuting, caregiving, and not sleeping or eating well because you can't afford to, it's genuinely hard to have social health, let alone do well in your classes. Financial stress isn't separate from loneliness. It's often underneath it.

"There's a concept in education called the hidden curriculum, all the unwritten assumptions about how college works that students pick up naturally if their family has already been through it. A first generation student might not know what office hours are for, and if they're struggling academically for the first time, they may assume something is wrong with them rather than realizing everyone struggles sometimes in college. Small structural changes, renaming office hours to student hours, holding them at times students can actually attend, help that student and end up helping everyone."

Let's talk about the parent experience for a moment. If a mom or dad gets a call in the first few weeks of school and their student says "I feel really lonely," what's the first thing you want that parent to know before they let themselves panic?

Dr. Fleuriet: "I want to be clear I'm not speaking as a clinician here. What I'm drawing on is my prior work as a vice provost, and honestly, my own experience as a parent.

"When we took our daughter to college, the head of the health center told parents something I've never forgotten. When your student calls you upset and unloads, and then you don't hear from them for a while after that, that's often because they just needed to unload, and you were their safe space to do that. They may well hang up the phone, go hang out with friends, and feel better. You're usually catching them in an acute moment, not a lasting one.

"Of course, every parent wonders what if it's more than a passing moment. That's where the school comes in. Schools have infrastructure built to bridge the gap between a parent's concern and the actual resources on campus, wellness check-ins and points of contact that are getting more robust every year, because higher education wasn't originally designed for students who need that additional support, and it needs to be now.

"What I'd tell parents is to normalize it the way we try to on campus. My daughter, now a new student orientation leader at their own college, told me that they often relay their own experience to first year students. Our daughter said goodbye to us on move-in day, walked away crying, and then walked straight into the student life fair because they knew that's where they needed to be. That's adjustment loneliness in action, made possible by school supports. If a parent notices real, sustained changes in their child's behavior, that's the moment to reach out to the school’s student life team directly and stay in conversation with the people who can help."

Shifting from parents to students themselves, are there things a student can actually do, on their own, to get ahead of loneliness before it becomes a bigger problem, rather than waiting to react once it's already taken hold?

Dr. Fleuriet: "The first thing is normalization, knowing what to expect so it doesn't feel like personal failure when it shows up. Beyond that, physical third spaces matter enormously, places to gather outside of class and outside the dorm. And I'd point students toward shared activities over open-ended socializing, at least at first. A lot of students, especially those who came up through COVID, don't have comfortable social scripts yet for walking up to a stranger and starting a conversation. An activity gives you something to do together, which takes the pressure off."

Salem is a small, close-knit community by design, and you're in a somewhat unique position of seeing that firsthand as a new president. How does that scale and structure shape the way you think about student connection and belonging, and are there specific programs you're especially proud of?

Dr. Fleuriet: "Salem is unusual in that we're both a high school and a college on one campus, one of very few in the country structured that way. In the Academy, each year of high school is anchored by one of what we call the Four Cs, curiosity, compassion, creativity, and courage, and every month across those years focuses on a different dimension of wellness. For example, September is social wellness, right at the start of the year. October is emotional. It builds a shared language around wellbeing long before students ever set foot on the college side of campus.

"We also lean hard into research showing that college students who get involved in even one organization see real improvements in both mental health and academics, which is part of why something as simple as a club fair at the college early in the Fall semester matters so much. Having facilitated conversations on weightier topics also matters. Salem’s Engaging Ethics program brings students together around touchstones of care, courage, integrity, justice, and respect through structured dialogue and experiential learning. Students head into deeper emotional and intellectual waters together, with guidance. We also hold a Wellbeing Week each November that engages every dimension of wellness, because addressing persistent loneliness means addressing the whole person, not just one part of their life. Monthly, we offer art therapy sessions with a trained art therapist. Students have the space to slow down, create, reflect, and connect with one another. It's one more way to remind them they don't have to navigate college alone."

You've used the phrase "belonging and mattering" a few times now, and it seems to sit at the center of how you think about all of this. What does that phrase actually mean to you, beyond just connection in the general sense?

Dr. Fleuriet: "As an anthropologist, I think about the human self as a whole bundle of relationships, those we have, those we don’t, and what that means as to who we are. The idea of “me” as bounded by the body doesn't hold up when we understand ourselves in relation to others.

"Early in my career, I worked at an institution that, like Salem, embraces first generation college students, and we designed programs and services using research on what predicted academic persistence for students facing the greatest challenges. Money was important. Good teaching was important. Support services were important. But there was a lot of success left unexplained, and what the research pointed to was belonging and mattering, in the classroom and on campus. If I feel like I belong and I matter to others, I'm connected, and I don't feel so lonely. I also am more likely earn better grades and graduate on time.

"People have different ways of feeling connected. Some want one other person. Some want five, or connection spread across several groups and spaces. And what works for us today in terms of connection may be different a year from now. Humans are like that: messy, complicated, wonderful."

As we wrap up, if a student walked into your office right now, worried and telling you they feel lonely, what would you actually say to them?

Dr. Fleuriet: "Have grace, give yourself grace, give others grace. College is a big change, an exciting one, and it can be overwhelming at times, but you're going to be okay.

"Give yourself time. Don't judge your college experience by the month of September. Judge it by where you are in March or April of your first year.

"Try something new, and it's usually easiest alongside someone else, in a student club, or an experience you wouldn't normally try, maybe a conversation with a professor whose class you connected with.

"And reflect, get help if you need it. There are so many layers of support available: peer support, faculty, student affairs, professional support. Checking in with yourself matters just as much as checking in with everyone else."