Effort, dedication, and critical evaluation are put forward to keep institutions running. With over five thousand colleges and universities, an incredible impact has been made, setting America’s education standards apart from the rest of the world (Liyanage et al., 2019). One of the most prominent learning institutions is Stanford University, established in 1885 (Liyanage et al., 2019). Many well-wishers, the school, government, and non-governmental organizations contribute every year to the school to accommodate scholarships for international students, those who have an intelligent mind but cannot afford quality education in their mother countries. Even with this success, Stanford students struggle with mental health, affordability, lack of welcome in the university, and racial discrimination, the most significant problems affecting the institution.
Stanford University is diverse in terms of the origin of the students in the school. Diversity is a good factor in helping the students learn about different cultures as they associate in their learning process. Being a student at Stanford means a high level of competition and rigorous learning. Such high stress makes the students struggle with mental problems as they compete to be the best (Liyanage et al., 2019). Another problem is the high cost of living in the university. Housing expenses, food, and upkeep make the students work two or three jobs to manage the cost of living, negatively impacting their academics. Another crucial factor is Stanford’s culture of not being welcoming. Students face this during admission face and suffer throughout the study period, leading to school dropouts. A sad note of racial discrimination sums all this up; some students have used social platforms like Twitter to express racial discrimination, disrupting the learning process as the offended students fight back for their rights (Liyanage et al., 2019). Such challenges disrupt the education process and bring inefficiency to the study curriculum.
Efficient countermeasures should be implemented to fight all these problems and create a suitable planning model. The issue of high stress experienced by the students has led to students living miserable lives in school and developing mental problems. The school should implement a guidance and counseling team with compulsory sessions with therapists where each student should be evaluated, assessed, and advised later. The government should give directives to reduce the cost of services around the campus to allow the students to afford them. The university should organize teams of students according to different categories, such as regions of origin, courses, and religious beliefs, which should be incorporated together to form more defined categories. Students should be allocated one of these groups during the admission process to help them feel more welcomed by people with whom they share common interests. The Stanford Board of committee and directors should implement strict repercussions for students who try to discriminate against other students by race.
Some significant strengths in the planning and execution process are that students in anti-racism movements will work together to implement discrimination rules. Additionally, with the help of student leaders and club leaders, students will create groups willingly to help welcome their fellow students. Some of the foreseen challenges are that the government may not have full authority to direct the campus service providers to lower the costs because most are privately owned. One unforeseen challenge might be the unwillingness of students to open up to therapists during the sessions. The campus should create awareness of the importance of counseling to solve the problem of failure to open up. The government should also contribute by building amenities such as hostels and canteens with subsidized services.
Reference
Liyanage, S., Dia, H., Abduljabbar, R., & Bagloee, S. (2019). Flexible mobility-on-demand: An environmental scan. Sustainability, 11(5), 1262. Web.