Higher education institutions should not be responsible for the mental health problems experienced by students, Higher Education Minister Françoise Bertiaux (MR) said on Tuesday after French-speaking rectors recently sounded the alarm on the issue.
Queried on Tuesday by a committee in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, FWB, parliament, Ms Bertieaux said that the mental health problems of young people were primarily a matter for the federal government, or even the Walloon Region or the Commission of the French Community (Cocof) following recent transfers of powers, but not for the educational establishments themselves.
“I think we need to move away from this logic of asking higher education to take responsibility itself for all the social problems that affect or may affect its educational community,” the minister commented.
“Higher education must focus on its core missions, while forging partnerships with specialist professional services (….) that go beyond its field of expertise,” she added.
Ms Bertieaux told the members of parliament that Federal Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke had recently decided to quadruple the budgets for funding front-line psychological care. However, to date, only 74% of these resources had been used, she pointed out.
For the minister, it was not up to the social services of higher education establishments to “replace existing psychological help services.”
At the end of August, French-speaking rectors had sounded the alarm about a deterioration in the mental health of young people that was worse than during the pandemic, leading, in their view, to excessive demand on universities' social services.
Faced with this situation, the rectors had called on the public authorities to increase subsidies to help universities strengthen their social services.
