Beyond Competencies: Unpacking Institutional Emotional Architectures and Stratified Burdens for Social-Emotional Learning in Indian Higher Education

For decades, schools have focused heavily on teaching students how to think, solve problems, and memorize facts. But in recent years, educators and health experts have realized that learning is deeply tied to how people feel. This field, known as social-emotional learning, is about developing the ability to understand one's own emotions, manage stress, show empathy to others, and make responsible choices. While these skills are now common in elementary and high school classrooms around the world, they have largely been ignored in universities. This gap is becoming critical because student mental health is deteriorating globally. In India, the situation has reached a crisis point, with a sharp rise in student suicides over the last few years. The prevailing idea has been that if students simply learned to manage their own feelings better, they would be fine. However, this view treats emotional struggles as individual failures rather than symptoms of a larger system.

A new study from researchers at the Mittal School of Business in India challenges this narrow perspective. Focusing on the state of West Bengal, the team investigated whether social-emotional learning works in higher education and, more importantly, how the environment of a university affects a student's ability to learn these skills. They did not just ask students how they felt; they looked at the entire ecosystem, including the teachers, the school policies, and the social backgrounds of the students. By combining surveys, interviews, and a review of existing research, they uncovered a complex reality where students from different backgrounds face vastly different emotional challenges. The study suggests that teaching emotional skills in a vacuum is not enough; the institutions themselves must change to support the students who are already carrying heavy, invisible burdens.

The researchers began by gathering data from over 500 students across three universities in Kolkata, a major city in West Bengal. They also spoke in depth with dozens of students, faculty members, and university leaders. To understand the bigger picture, they reviewed nearly 190 other studies on the topic. What they found was that while the idea of social-emotional learning is gaining attention, actual awareness among university students in this region is quite low. On a scale of one to five, students rated their own understanding of these skills at just above three. More telling was the gap between different groups of students. Those who were the first in their families to attend college, those from lower-income households, and those from historically marginalized castes scored significantly lower on these skills than their peers. This was not because they lacked potential, but because their daily lives required them to navigate a world that often felt unwelcoming or confusing.

The study revealed a strong link between these emotional skills and mental well-being. Students who felt they could manage their emotions and understand others reported better psychological health. However, this connection was weaker for students from marginalized backgrounds. For a student from a privileged background, learning to manage emotions might feel like a helpful tool. For a first-generation student from a lower-income family, the same task can feel like an exhausting extra job. The researchers identified a phenomenon they call "competency dissonance." This happens when the emotional culture of a student's home or community clashes with the expectations of the university. A student might be direct and straightforward at home, but the university expects a different, more polished style of communication. The student is then forced to constantly translate their feelings and behavior to fit in, a process that drains their energy and makes them feel like they are lacking something, when in fact they are simply navigating two different worlds.

Perhaps the most surprising finding was that the people supposed to help, the teachers, were often just as unprepared as the students. When asked, 73 percent of the faculty members said they had never received any formal training in social-emotional learning. They felt the importance of these skills, with most rating them as very high, but they lacked the tools to teach them. They cited a lack of time, huge class sizes, and a curriculum that left no room for anything other than academic content as major barriers. Instead of relying on official counseling services, which very few students used, the students themselves built their own safety nets. They formed tight-knit groups of friends who acted as informal support systems, sharing emotional labor and offering advice that the university administration did not provide. The researchers called these "covert infrastructures," hidden networks that kept students afloat in the absence of official support.

The study also highlighted that emotional burdens are not shared equally. The researchers described "stratified emotional burdens," meaning that the weight of managing emotions is distributed unevenly based on a person's social location. A student from a wealthy, upper-caste family might face academic stress, but a first-generation student from a lower-caste background faces that same stress on top of financial insecurity, social prejudice, and the pressure of representing their entire family's hopes. The university environment often ignores these layers, treating all students as if they start from the same place. This blindness to inequality means that standard programs to teach emotional skills often fail the very people who need them most. The data showed that the relationship between emotional skills and well-being was significantly weaker for these students, suggesting that no amount of individual training can fix a system that is structurally unfair.

In response to these findings, the authors propose a new way forward that moves beyond simply teaching students how to cope. They argue that universities must become "emotional architectures," meaning the physical and policy structures of the institution must be designed to support well-being. This involves creating safe spaces, changing how classes are taught, and acknowledging the extra emotional work that some students are forced to do. It requires recognizing that a student's background shapes their experience and providing specific support for those navigating cultural mismatches. The researchers emphasize that this is not about fixing the student, but about fixing the environment. They suggest that universities need to build on the informal support networks students have already created, rather than trying to replace them with top-down programs that do not fit the local culture.

The study concludes that the cost of doing nothing is high. Without a fundamental shift in how institutions view student well-being, the cycle of distress will continue. The mental health crisis among students is not just a medical issue; it is a structural one. By understanding the specific ways that caste, class, and family background influence emotional life, universities can stop asking students to simply "be resilient" and start building campuses where students from all backgrounds can truly thrive. The path forward requires leadership that prioritizes these issues, faculty who are trained to support them, and a willingness to admit that the current system is not working for everyone. This research offers a roadmap for transforming Indian higher education, and potentially universities elsewhere, into places where genuine flourishing is possible for every student, not just the lucky few.