In 2023, New Jersey\u2019s Office of the Secretary of Higher Education signed a first-of-its-kind agreement with a digital mental health provider, Uwill, to provide free access to virtual mental health services to college students across the state.<\/p>\n
Over the past two years, 18,000-plus students across 45 participating colleges and universities have registered with the service, representing about 6\u00a0percent of the eligible postsecondary population. The state considers the partnership a success and hopes to codify the offering to ensure its sustainability beyond the current governor\u2019s term.<\/p>\n
The details: <\/strong>New Jersey\u2019s partnership with Uwill was spurred by a 2021 survey<\/a> of 15,500 undergraduate and graduate students from 60 institutions in the state, which found that 70\u00a0percent of respondents rated their stress and anxiety as higher in fall 2021 than in fall 2020. Forty\u00a0percent indicated they were concerned about their mental health in light of the pandemic.<\/p>\n Under the agreement, students can use Uwill\u2019s teletherapy, crisis connection and wellness programming at any time. Like others in the teletherapy space, Uwill offers an array of diverse licensed mental health providers, giving students access to therapists who share their backgrounds or language, or who reside in their state. Over half (55\u00a0percent) of the counselors Uwill hires in New Jersey are Black, Indigenous or people of color; among them, they speak 11 languages.<\/p>\n What makes Uwill distinct from its competitors is that therapy services are on-demand, meaning students are matched with a counselor within minutes of logging on to the platform. Students can request to see the same counselor in the future, but the nearly immediate access ensures they are not caught in long wait or intake times, especially compared to in-person counseling services.<\/p>\n Under New Jersey\u2019s agreement, colleges and students do not pay for Uwill services, but colleges must receive state aid to be eligible.<\/p>\n The research: <\/strong>The need for additional counseling capacity on college campuses has grown<\/a> over the past decade, as an increasing number of students enter higher education with pre-existing mental health conditions<\/a>. The most recent survey of counseling center staff<\/a> by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD) found that while demand for services is on the decline compared to recent years, a larger number of students have more serious conditions<\/a>.<\/p>\n Over half of four-year institutions and about one-third of community colleges nationwide provide teletherapy to students via third-party vendors, according to AUCCCD data. The average number of students who engaged with services in 2024 was 453, across institution size.<\/p>\n Online therapy providers tout the benefits of having a service that supplements on-campus, in-person therapists\u2019 services to provide more comprehensive care, including racially and ethnically diverse staff, after-hours support and on-demand resources for students.<\/p>\n Eric Wood, director of counseling and mental health at Texas Christian University, told Inside Higher Ed that an ideal teletherapy vendor is one that increases capacity for on-campus services, expanding availability for on-campus staff and ensuring that students do not fall through the cracks.<\/p>\n A 2024 analysis<\/a> of digital mental health tools from the Hope Center at Temple University\u2014which did not include Uwill\u2014found they can improve student mental health, but there is little direct evidence regarding marginalized student populations\u2019 use of or benefits from them. Instead, the greatest benefit appears to be for students who would not otherwise engage in traditional counseling or who simply seek preventative resources.<\/p>\n One study featured in the Hope Center\u2019s report noted the average student only used their campus\u2019s wellness app or teletherapy service once; the report calls for more transparency around usage data prior to institutional investment.<\/p>\n The data: <\/strong>Uwill reported that from April 2023 to May 2025, 18,207 New Jersey students engaged in their services at the 45 participating institutions, which include Princeton, Rutgers, Montclair State and Seton Hall Universities, as well as the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Stevens Institute of Technology. Engaged students were defined as any students who logged in to the app and created an account.<\/p>\n New Jersey\u2019s total college enrollment in 2022 was 378,819, according to state data. An Inside Higher Ed analysis of publicly available data found total enrollment (including undergraduate and graduate students) among the 45 participating colleges to be 327,353. Uwill participants in New Jersey, therefore, totaled around 4\u00a0percent of the state\u2019s postsecondary students or 6\u00a0percent of eligible students.<\/p>\n The state paid $4\u00a0million for the first year of the Uwill contract, as reported by Higher Ed Dive<\/a>, pulling dollars from a $10\u00a0million federal grant to support pandemic relief and a $16\u00a0million budget allocation for higher education partnerships. That totals about $89,000 per institution for the first year alone, or $12 per eligible student, according to an Inside Higher Ed estimate.<\/p>\n In a 2020 interview with Inside Higher Ed<\/a>, Uwill CEO Michael London said the minimum cost to a college for one year of services is about $25,000, or $10 to $20 per student per year.<\/p>\n New Jersey students met with counselors in more than 78,000 therapy sessions, or about six sessions per student between 2023 and 2025, according to Uwill data. Students also engaged in 548 chat sessions with therapists, sent 6,593 messages and requested 1,216 crisis connections during the first two years of service.<\/p>\n User engagement has slowly ticked up since the partnership launched. In January 2024<\/a>, the state said more than 7,600 students registered on the platform, scheduling nearly 20,000 sessions. By September 2024<\/a>, Uwill reported more than 13,000 registered students on the platform, scheduling more than 49,000 sessions. The most recent data<\/a>, published June\u00a06, identified 18,000 students engaging in 78,000 sessions.<\/p>\n Over 1,200 of Montclair State\u2019s 22,000 students have registered with Uwill since June 2023, Jaclyn Friedman-Lombardo, Montclair State\u2019s director of counseling and psychological services, said at a press conference<\/a>, or approximately 6\u00a0percent of the total campus population.<\/p>\n The state does not require institutions to track student usage data to compare usage to campus counseling center services, but some institutions choose to, according to a spokesperson for both the office of the secretary and Uwill. The secretary\u2019s office can view de-identified campus-level data and institutions can engage with more detailed data, as well. <\/p>\n Creating access: <\/strong>One of the goals of implementing digital mental health interventions is to expand access beyond traditional counseling centers, such as after hours, on weekends or over academic breaks.<\/p>\n Roughly 30\u00a0percent of participants in the Uwill partnership completed a session between 5\u00a0p.m. and 9\u00a0a.m. on a weeknight or on the weekends. Over the 2024\u201325 winter break, students engaged in 3,073 therapy sessions. More than 90 of those took place outside New Jersey. Students also used Uwill services over summer vacation this past year (9,235 sessions from May\u00a020 to Aug.\u00a026, of which 10\u00a0percent took place outside New Jersey).<\/p>\n A majority of users were traditional-aged college students (17 to 24 years old), and 32\u00a0percent were white, 25\u00a0percent Hispanic and 17\u00a0percent Black. The report did not compare participating students\u2019 race to those using on-campus services or general campus populations.<\/p>\n About 85\u00a0percent of New Jersey users were looking for a BIPOC therapist, and 9\u00a0percent requested therapists who speak languages other than English, including Hindi and Mandarin.<\/p>\n Postsession assessment completed by students who do schedule an appointment has returned positive responses, with a feedback score of 9.5\u00a0out of 10 in New Jersey, compared to Uwill\u2019s 9.2\u00a0rating nationally. <\/p>\n Unanswered questions: <\/strong>Wood indicated the data leaves some questions left unanswered, such as whether students were also clients at the on-campus counseling center, or if the service had improved students\u2019 mental health over time from a clinical perspective.<\/p>\n \u201cJust because a student had four sessions with a telehealth provider, if they came right back to the counseling center, did it really make an impact on the center\u2019s capacity to see students?\u201d Wood said.<\/p>\n The high cost of the service should also give counseling center directors pause, Wood said, because those dollars could be used for a variety of other interventions to create capacity. <\/p>\n The data indicated some benefits to counseling center capacity, including diverse staff and after-hours support. But to create a true return on investment, counseling centers should calculate how much capacity the tele\u2013mental health service created and its direct impact on student wellness, not just participation in services.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be ideal to compare the number of students receiving services (not just creating an account) through the platform to the number of students who would likely benefit from receiving treatment, as identified by clinically validated mental health screens on population surveys,\u201d said Sara Abelson, assistant professor at the Hope Center and the report\u2019s lead author.<\/p>\n What\u2019s next: <\/strong>New Jersey renewed its contract with Uwill first in January 2024<\/a> and then again in May, extending through spring 2026. State leaders said the ongoing services are still supported by pandemic relief funds. <\/p>\n On May 2, New Jersey assemblywoman Andrea Katz from the Eighth District introduced a bill, the Mental Health Early Access on Campus Act<\/a>, which would require colleges to implement mental health first aid training among campus stakeholders, peer support programs, mental health orientation education and teletherapy services to ensure counseling ratios are one to every 1,250 students per campus. The International Accreditation of Counseling Services<\/a> recommends universities maintain a ratio of at least one full-time equivalency for every 1,000 to 1,500 students. <\/p>\n \u201cWe know that mental health services that our kids need are not going to end when we change governors,\u201d Katz said at a press conference. \u201cWe need to make sure that all of this is codified into law.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2023, New Jersey\u2019s Office of the Secretary of Higher Education signed a first-of-its-kind agreement with a digital…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[2563,407,2879,210,2878,420,517,50,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-2094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-career","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-events","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-higher","13":"tag-jobs","14":"tag-mental-health","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114720897923778510","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}