Supporting bereaved students at university: Balancing institutional standards and reputation alongside individual compassion and care

Abstract

Bereaved university students in the UK are an overlooked population in research, policy, and practice. In this article, we examine the implications of this neglect via (1) international literature on bereavement in young people; (2) international literature on bereavement in higher education students; (3) UK and US literature on workplace bereavement and its implications for universities in preparing the future workforce; and (4) findings from a scoping study of 90 UK universities’ bereavement support, which identified no shared comprehensive strategy for student bereavement. Our findings show an urgent need for UK universities to address this neglect.