The Psychology of Belonging in Higher Education

What Belonging Can Teach Us About Student Experience and Success

A student can be enrolled in an institution without ever feeling that they truly belong there.

They can attend class. Complete assignments. Meet academic requirements. Walk across campus. Interact with faculty and staff.

And still quietly question: Do I belong here?

That question matters.

Belonging in higher education is not simply about whether students feel comfortable or enjoy being on campus. Research describes belonging through experiences such as connection, acceptance, support, respect, inclusion, mattering, and feeling valued within the university community.

For colleges and universities, this makes belonging more than a student-life issue. It is also a psychological, educational, and leadership issue.

What Do We Mean by Belonging?

Belonging can be easy to discuss and surprisingly difficult to define.

A 2024 systematic review of higher-education research found considerable variation in how researchers define and measure students' sense of belonging. Across the literature, however, recurring ideas included acceptance, connectedness, support, being valued, respect, inclusion, mattering, and feeling part of the institution or community.

This distinction is important. Belonging is not created simply because an institution tells students: You belong here.

Students interpret belonging through their experiences. They may ask themselves:

• Do people notice when I am struggling?

• Can I ask for help without feeling judged?

• Do faculty and staff communicate that I matter?

• Can I be myself here?

• Do I see people like me represented and respected?

• When I encounter difficulty, does this institution help me find a way forward-or leave me to navigate the system alone?

These experiences can contribute to the psychological meaning students attach to being members of an institution.

Belonging and Student Success

The growing research base gives higher education leaders good reason to pay attention.

A 2025 critical review synthesizing 118 studies found connections between student belonging and several dimensions of student success, including engagement, well-being, and retention. It also found evidence that practices such as personalized staff support and certain experiential approaches can positively influence belonging, while experiences such as stereotyping by staff can undermine it.

At the same time, leaders should be careful not to oversimplify the evidence.

A 2024 scoping review examining 69 reports found that associations between belonging and academic outcomes such as GPA and persistence varied considerably. Most associations were positive but small, demonstrating that belonging should not be treated as a single explanation for academic success or persistence.

That nuance matters. Belonging is important, but belonging does not operate in isolation.

Financial pressures, academic preparation, mental health and well-being, institutional policies, access to resources, family responsibilities, campus climate, advising, faculty interactions, and many other factors can shape students' experiences.

The goal should not be to turn belonging into another simplistic retention strategy.

The better question is: What conditions are we creating that communicate to students that they matter here?

Belonging Is Experienced in More Than One Place

Students do not experience “the institution” as a single entity. They experience people.

A professor. An advisor. A department chair. A financial-aid representative. A classmate. A staff member. A policy. An email. A classroom.

A process that either makes sense or sends them from office to office trying to figure out what to do next.

Qualitative research has also illustrated the complexity of belonging. Research with first-year students, for example, has identified interconnected dimensions including familiarity, interpersonal belonging, and academic belonging. This means a student might feel socially connected but academically uncertain.

Another student might perform well academically but feel disconnected from the campus community. Another might feel deeply connected to a professor or program while finding the broader institution difficult to navigate.

Belonging is not necessarily one experience. It can be produced—or disrupted—across multiple points of contact.

Belonging Is Also a Systems Question

This is where the conversation becomes particularly important for higher education leadership. Institutions frequently approach belonging through programs: welcome events, student organizations, orientation, mentoring, campus activities, and engagement initiatives.

Those things can matter.

But belonging cannot rest solely with Student Affairs, counseling centers, diversity initiatives, or individual faculty members who happen to be particularly supportive.

Leaders should also examine the systems students encounter every day.

Consider:

How difficult is it to find help? What happens after a student asks for help? How are students treated when they make mistakes? Do policies make sense from the student's perspective? Do departments communicate with one another? Are faculty and staff equipped to respond appropriately when students disclose challenges? Does institutional communication create clarity—or confusion? Can students access resources before a situation becomes a crisis?

These are not merely operational questions. They can become part of a student's experience of whether the institution is responsive to them.

Belonging Does Not Mean Every Student Experiences Campus the Same Way

There is another important consideration. We should be cautious about speaking about “students” as though they constitute one uniform population.

The 2024 systematic review found meaningful differences in how belonging has been conceptualized and measured when research considers students' ethnicity and first-generation status. The researchers specifically called for greater attention to context and intersecting student identities when studying belonging.

That has practical implications.

An institutional practice that feels welcoming to one student may not produce the same experience for another. A student entering a familiar educational environment may interpret campus differently from someone navigating higher education for the first time in their family. And students' experiences are shaped by multiple identities and contexts simultaneously.

Therefore, leaders should resist assuming: “We created a belonging initiative, so students now feel that they belong.”

Instead, institutions have to listen.

From Belonging to Empathetic Administration™

This conversation also intersects with my research on Empathetic Administration™. Empathy in higher education cannot exist only as an interpersonal quality.

A faculty member can be empathetic. An advisor can be empathetic. A department chair can be empathetic. But students also encounter systems.

Policies. Procedures. Communication structures. Referral processes. Academic expectations. Administrative decisions. Those systems communicate something, too.

This raises an important leadership question: What would it mean to design institutional systems that do not simply provide support, but make support understandable, accessible, responsive, and human?

That is one of the spaces where belonging, leadership, student well-being, and institutional culture intersect.

What Higher Education Leaders Can Consider

Belonging does not require leaders to create an environment where students never experience discomfort, challenge, accountability, or disagreement.

Higher education should challenge people. But challenge and belonging are not opposites. Students can encounter rigorous expectations while also experiencing respect.

They can receive corrective feedback while still experiencing dignity. They can struggle academically while knowing where to seek support. They can disagree while remaining members of a learning community. They can experience difficulty without interpreting difficulty as evidence that they do not belong.

For leaders, this means moving beyond the question:

“What belonging programs do we have?”

and asking:

“How do students experience this institution?”

That question opens a much larger conversation.

Questions for Leadership Reflection

As you consider belonging within your own institution, department, classroom, or organization, consider:

• Where are students most likely to experience connection and support?

• Where might our processes unintentionally communicate distance, confusion, or exclusion?

• What happens when a student asks for help?

• Which students may experience our institution differently from the way leadership assumes they experience it?

• How do our policies communicate respect, dignity, and accountability simultaneously?

• Are we measuring whether students participate—or actually listening to how they experience belonging?

And perhaps most importantly:

If students tell us they do not feel that they belong, are we prepared to examine the environment—not only the student?

From Research to Practice

Belonging cannot be manufactured through a slogan.

It develops through experiences.

Through relationships. Through classrooms. Through leadership. Through communication. Through policies. Through systems. And through repeated moments that communicate:

You matter here.

For higher education leaders, the opportunity is not simply to convince students that they belong. It is to continually examine whether we are building institutions in which students have meaningful reasons to experience that belonging. That is where research moves beyond understanding.

And into practice.

References

Dias-Broens, A. S., Meeuwisse, M., & Severiens, S. E. (2024). The definition and measurement of sense of belonging in higher education: A systematic literature review with a special focus on students' ethnicity and generation status in higher education. Educational Research Review, 45, 100622.

Dost, G., & Mazzoli Smith, L. (2023). Understanding higher education students' sense of belonging: A qualitative meta-ethnographic analysis. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 47(6), 822–849.

Fong, C. J., Adelugba, S. F., Garza, M., Lorenzi Pinto, G., Gonzales, C., Zarei, P., & Rozek, C. S. (2024). A scoping review of the associations between sense of belonging and academic outcomes in postsecondary education. Educational Psychology Review, 36, Article 138.

Gilani, D., & Thomas, L. (2025). Understanding the factors and consequences of student belonging in higher education: A critical literature review. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 34.

This article is provided for educational and informational purposes only. It does not provide counseling, psychotherapy, diagnosis, treatment, legal advice, or individualized professional services.

© 2026 Dr. Arlissia Bradley, PhD. All rights reserved. Get Psyched with Prof B™ and Empathetic Administration™ are proprietary brand concepts of Dr. Arlissia Bradley. This content may not be copied, reproduced, republished, adapted, distributed, used for training, or incorporated into other materials without written permission.