College Student Development

In this Issue: one theory of college student development and how families can understand the phases/changes our students go through as they strive for adulthood

Students go through a lot of changes while they are in college, as this is essentially a time when they are leaving childhood and becoming young adults who will be ready to enter the world upon graduation.

There are a number of theories of college student identity development, but one that has been around a long time – and appears to stand the test of time – is Chickering and Reisser’s 7 Vectors. These are phases that students must go through as they move from dependence (on their parents/guardians) to independence (as fully functioning adults).

I have roughly paraphrased the vectors (see italics below); full credit goes to my student development textbook (click image to enlarge), as well as this handout, which is where the bullets below come from.

Developing Competence – Building needed skills – everything from doing your laundry, to learning to navigate course registration, to learning faculty expectations, to sharing a room with a roommate, etc.

• Intellectual competence: developing knowledge and skills related to particular subject matter
• Physical competence: developed through physical productivity (artistic, recreational, manual labor)
• Interpersonal competence: the development of understanding, communicating, and interacting with others.

Managing Emotions – Recognizing and accepting your emotions and finding a way to express them/act on them appropriately

• Recognize and accept emotions
• Appropriately express and control them: Understanding appropriate release of emotions with the flexibility of control or learning to express them

Moving Through Autonomy Toward Interdependence – Becoming more autonomous (i.e., you don’t need affirmation, support, approval to act), directing your own actions, developing problem-solving, and understanding that you are not an island, but have interconnectedness with others

• Increase emotional freedom
• Emotional Independence: Emotional independence means freedom from continual and pressing needs for reassurance, affection, or approval.
• Instrumental Independence: the ability to organize activities and to solve problems in a self-directed way, and the ability to be mobile
• Interdependence: having the awareness that others are connected to the individual’s actions

Developing Mature Interpersonal Relationships – Having productive relationships with others, particularly others who are not like you; this includes understanding, appreciating, and respecting difference in others, and being able to have healthy and lasting relationships with partners and others

• Interpersonal and intercultural tolerance
• Appreciate differences: the ability to respond to people in their own right rather than as stereotypes or transference objects calling for particular conventions.
• Create healthy intimate relationships
• More reciprocal and empathetic: Development means more in-depth sharing and less clinging, more acceptance of flaws and appreciation of assets, more selectivity in choosing nurturing relationships, and more long-lasting relationships that endure through crises, distance, and separation.

Establishing Identity – Becoming comfortable in your own skin re: appearance, gender and sexuality, cultural heritage, etc.; having a clear sense of yourself even in the face of feedback from others, and personal stability

• Acknowledge differences in identity development: gender, ethnic background, and sexual orientation
• Identity formation depends in part on the other vectors: competence, emotional maturity, autonomy, and positive relationships

Developing Purpose – Developing a clear sense of personal or vocational goals/finding your calling, engaging in activities of interest to you, making decisions that feel right to you and sticking with them (even when you get pushback)

• Career goals
• Commitments to personal interest or activities
• Strong interpersonal commitments

Developing Integrity – Learning to consider your needs vs the needs of other people/good of the whole; ability to hold your core beliefs but acknowledge and respect the values of others when different; your actions align with your values

• Humanize and personalize values: Shifting away from automatic set of values to developing one’s own values while also respecting the differences of others values or point of view
• Develop congruence: Our core values and beliefs provide the foundation for interpreting experience, guiding behavior, and maintaining self-respect.

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So how can families support their students as they go through these developmental stages?

First: be aware that this identity development is taking place, and that your students are learning – often through trial and error – how to grow into themselves. While every student will vary in terms of when and how they move through these stages, the earlier vectors might correspond to younger students, and the later ones to older students.

Second: give them space and freedom as they are on this journey. Example: they need practice in developing competence – so the more we help, the less they grow. This is where Stop, Drop, and Roll comes in 🙂 By extension, if you ask me how to help your student with something and I encourage you to have your student do the work/make the call/schedule a meeting with me to discuss it (rather than me give the answer to you), understand that my goal is to help your student grow and give them what they need to take these developmental steps forward 🙂

Third: recognize that as they become more mature, they might ask for your help less, or might choose not to follow the advice you give them. This is normal and part of the student development process, and is not a repudiation of your parenting or your values. Successfully moving towards adulthood means that students become more confident in their own decisions and are not relying on the affirmation of family, friends, or others as they chart their course.

Fourth: love and accept them for who they are, in all senses of that word. An example: you don’t have to share their life’s purpose, but you can accept and affirm that their purpose is right for them.

That’s my very brief, high level interpretation of student development. But I hope it might be helpful in understanding some of the inner work your students are doing (even though they are not consciously aware of it!) and how you can best support them.