Giving Compass' Take:

• Sarah Beller reports that research reveals that Ivy League schools are handling student mental health poorly, punishing rather than supporting students in need. 

• How can schools better support the mental health needs of their students? How does this contribute to the challenges that first-gen students face at elite schools? 

• Learn about efforts to support first-gen students at ivy-league schools. 

Ivy League colleges are failing students who struggle with mental health, according to a new report published by the Ruderman Family Foundation—a private philanthropic organization that advocates for the inclusion of people with disabilities. The report graded eight schools on their policies around leaves of absence for students experiencing mental illness.

“A leave of absence is potentially useful to the student,” author Miriam Heyman, PhD writes. “[S]tudents can use the time away from academic demands to focus on well being and recovery. However, schools may also use the leave of absence as a tool for discrimination, pushing students out of school who are entitled by law to receive accommodations and supports which would enable them to stay.”

The schools’ leave of absence policies received grades according to 15 indicators, including: their level of transparency (whether students know what to expect if on leave, and under what conditions they will be allowed to return); support (whether students know how to access campus resources while at school and during their leave); and inclusivity (whether leaves of absence are used in a discriminatory way).

Yale received the lowest grade of “F”—the only school to receive such a grade. (Having attended Yale as an undergraduate, I was coerced to take a “voluntary” leave of absence there. Like one student from Princeton profiled in the paper, I was told by Yale administrators that if I did not take a voluntary leave, I would be placed on an involuntary one.)

Harvard didn’t do much better at a “D-minus.” Princeton, Brown and Columbia led the pack with “Ds.”

Read the full article about Ivy League schools and student mental health by Sarah Beller at Filter.