College Students Expect Professors to Assume Mentorship Role Besides Teaching, Survey Says
However, many faculty members struggle to form and nurture trust, as it's a time-consuming process.
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Last month, November, colleges turned to AI for streamlined teaching assistants, to which students reacted to positively. As it turns out, students are actually looking for mentors in professors, which likely AI have filled in those institutions, although there are limitations.
A Student Voice survey conducted by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab, in particular, found that 55% of students believe professors are at least somewhat responsible for mentoring them. This expectation reflects a shift in the relationship between faculty and students, where students no longer view professors as merely instructors but as career guides and supporters.
Mentorship, especially in career development, is becoming an increasingly important aspect of the student experience, and many faculty members are starting to see it as part of their roles, Insight Higher Ed reported.
Mentoring students is not new among faculty members. In fact, Emily J. Isaacs, the executive director for Faculty Excellence at Montclair State University, considers this a natural extension of academics. Professors very often share their own career journey with students to help navigate students' paths. This may include assisting the students to seek internships, connecting them with potential employers, or just advising them on their professional development.
The career-specific aspects of mentoring are gaining importance because students now require more assistance in starting up their careers once they graduate. According to studies, private nonprofit institutions, as well as younger students, tend to expect more career-related mentoring.
Professors as Mentors
Faculty members are increasingly being involved as guides in these processes. However, training and encouragement of professors to assume mentorship roles remain challenging issues. While many professors support mentoring, particularly in how to prepare students for work after graduation, others counter that faculty members are not properly trained or motivated to include any form of career-related guidance into their teaching.
However, not all professors are equipped to mentor students effectively, since it depends on key trust, mutual enjoyment, and above all, understanding the mentee's individuality. After all, mentorship is not just about providing career advice—it's about building a meaningful, supportive relationship, as found by a study by Miske (2024).
At the same time, not all students are proactive towards seeking mentorship, which sometimes makes the professors also initiate those connections. Forming trust and nurturing is a rather complicated and a time-consuming process.
Regardless, a number of institutions have begun offering faculty advising programs to try to standardize mentorship, allowing professors to spend more time providing discipline-specific, personalized support.
The idea is that faculty members will spend more time mentoring while administrative staff handle more technical matters, such as degree mapping. Another way to do this is by creating informal settings where students can interact with professors outside of class: casual office hours or departmental events, for example.
By making these interactions more personal and approachable, professors can help build stronger, more effective mentorship relationships with their students.
