Most colleges and universities have already done the hard work of building student support. Counseling centers, basic needs programs, academic coaching, and CARE teams are standard across campuses. Students know these services exist. The harder part is helping them actually use them.
New survey findings reported by Inside Higher Ed this week make that gap hard to ignore. Of the college students surveyed, 92 percent knew their institution offered at least one type of support, but only 59 percent reported using one or more of those services.
Why students hold back
The research points to a few patterns that student affairs professionals will recognize. Many students are reluctant to say they’re struggling. Within the previous 30 days, 68 percent of undergraduates said they had told someone they were fine when they weren’t, and only 35 percent said they would answer a private digital check-in from their institution honestly.
Taking the first step is its own barrier. Nearly half of undergraduates (46 percent) said not knowing where to start was a moderate or major obstacle. Close behind were the effort it takes to reach out (45 percent) and the feeling that their concerns weren’t serious enough to warrant help (44 percent).
The stakes are real. More than one in five undergraduates had seriously considered stopping out, transferring, or leaving their institution in the previous six months. Among students who described themselves as just OK or getting by, that number climbed to 24 percent, double the rate of students who said they were thriving.
Why staff capacity matters to student access
The article also notes something every support team already knows. Campus health and support professionals are often balancing many responsibilities with limited resources, which makes it harder to ensure students get the help they need.
That’s the piece that connects everything. If students won’t always raise their hand, staff have to reach out first. Proactive outreach takes time, attention, and context, and those are exactly what get eaten up by manual follow-ups, scattered records, and administrative work. Every hour spent tracking down case history or re-entering information is an hour not spent connecting with a student.
Reducing the burden on staff isn’t separate from improving student access. It’s one of the most practical ways to do it.
How Advocate gives that time back
Symplicity Advocate is built to help student support teams spend less time managing process and more time supporting students. Here’s how that plays out across the full support journey.
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Capture concerns the moment they happen. When students tell the people around them they’re fine, observations from faculty, housing staff, and others become even more important. Advocate’s mobile-adaptive report forms let anyone complete a report right then and there, on campus or off, instead of waiting until they’re back at their desk. Concerns reach the right team faster, while the details are still fresh.
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Know who needs attention first. With Advocate’s CARE workflow, staff can plan the right assistance for each student, whether that’s mental health support, a connection to campus resources, or working with faculty to make sure a student is properly supported. Universities can set up scoring thresholds and build a Students of Concern List for easy monitoring, so teams can focus their outreach where it’s needed most.
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Make sure no follow-up slips through. Checklists and to-do dates help ensure assigned staff complete their follow-up tasks so no student is left unsupported. Advocate can also route cases automatically based on case type, the students involved, or other information the institution chooses, which means less time sorting and assigning and more time acting.
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See the whole story in one place. Student support rarely happens in a single conversation. With Advocate 9.4, staff can link appointments directly to Flexible Workflow cases through Associated Appointments. When a student does take that difficult first step and books time with someone, case managers can see every related interaction in one place and walk into the conversation with context.
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Spend less time on administrative work. Advocate 9.4 also introduces Cosmo, an AI assistant that answers questions drawn from Symplicity’s Help Center resources, so staff don’t have to dig through documentation. A new batch option lets teams close out multiple CARE Reports at once, and clearer activity logs make it easier for administrators to review case history.
Supporting the people who support students
The research is clear that students need easier, lower-pressure paths to help, and that waiting for them to ask isn’t enough. Meeting that need depends on support teams having the time and visibility to reach out first.
When staff spend less time on process, they have more time for the conversations that help students stay, recover, and succeed.
