Rethinking Student Success: Addiction, Wellbeing and Hidden Risks in Higher Education

Student success is shaped by far more than academic ability or access to higher education. This paper explores how factors such as mental health, financial pressure, social connection, wellbeing, and addiction influence students' ability to thrive. It highlights the importance of understanding the realities students face beyond the classroom and calls for a more holistic approach to supporting their long-term success and resilience.

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About the Authors

This paper was developed collaboratively by Tshikululu Social Investments and Thrive Student Living.

Suzan Mususumeli Ramudzuli, Social Investment Specialist at Tshikululu Social Investments, brings a social investment and student success perspective to the piece. Suzan’s contribution is informed by Tshikululu’s work supporting youth development initiatives across the higher education sector.

Nerene Grobler, Student Life Executive at Thrive Student Living, brings a complementary perspective informed by direct engagement with students and the day-to-day realities that shape student wellbeing, behaviour, and success.

Together, we offer complementary perspectives that use addiction as a lens to understand the deeper issues underpinning it.

Introduction: Student Success is Systemic

In 2025, Tshikululu Social Investments published Beyond Access: Reimagining Student Success as a Systemic Imperative. The paper challenged the notion that access to higher education alone is sufficient to improve student outcomes. We argued that student success is shaped by a broader set of academic, social, financial, institutional, and environmental factors that influence whether students are able to progress, complete their studies, and realise the opportunities that higher education promises (Council on Higher Education, 2020; Tinto, 2012).

This perspective has become increasingly important as higher education institutions, funders, and policymakers seek to improve student outcomes. Over the past decade, significant attention has been directed towards strengthening the systems that support student success. These include academic development, financial aid, student wellbeing, mental health services, accommodation, and student engagement (Council on Higher Education, 2020). These investments reflect a growing recognition that investing in student success requires a more holistic approach.

Despite this, students are still struggling and completion rates remain low: estimates differ by cohort and institution, but the Council on Higher Education reports that only around a third of students complete a three-year degree in the minimum time, and a substantial share do not complete at all (Council on Higher Education, 2020).

This should prompt a reflection on what issues and barriers we might be failing to address. This paper discusses the link between addiction and student success. It also unpacks how addiction can both underpin and bring attention to deeper issues preventing students from reaching their full potential.

Defining Addiction in South Africa

The definition of what constitutes addiction is broad, and ranges from substance abuse disorders to behaviours like gambling and excessive use of social media. According to The South African Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (SACENDU), alcohol and tobacco are the most frequently reported substances abused in South Africa. Substance use among the student population follows a similar trend. A 2022 study at a South African university found 62.7% overall substance-use prevalence among students, with alcohol use at 80.6% and cannabis use at 46% (Blows & Isaacs, 2022). The prevalence of co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders is also high (Saban et al., 2014).

More recently, gambling addiction has seen a surge in popularity due to the accessibility of sports betting on mobile apps. Calls to the National Gambling Board helpline have risen from 140,000 in 2017 to over a million in 2024/25 (National Gambling Board, 2025).

Addiction is commonly framed as a health, behavioural, or disciplinary concern. Responsibility is placed on individuals, and environmental factors that may cause substance abuse and addictive behaviours are seen as secondary or ignored altogether. Interventions more often look at fixing the problem and not the cause itself. This is particularly problematic in the South African context.

Where Addiction and Youth Struggles Converge

Understanding the link between addiction in the context of higher education requires a broader understanding of the challenges many young South Africans are navigating today.

Many are coming of age in a society still grappling with the consequences of inequality, exclusion, economic hardship, violence, and social fragmentation. According to Statistics South Africa, youth remain disproportionately affected by unemployment, with youth unemployment rates consistently exceeding national averages. StatsSA’s latest QLFS (Q1:2026) puts youth (15 to 34) unemployment at roughly 45%, and the 15 to 24 group at about 61%, against a national rate near 33%.

Challenges like rising unemployment are shaped by the intersection of race and class and affect individuals differently. But no matter how much these lived realities differ, they all converge around one commonality: South African youth are expected to learn, develop, and build their futures in an increasingly tumultuous environment. In a country where the odds are already stacked against youth, we cannot expect students to thrive without adequate support.

Research has pointed to growing concerns around anxiety, depression, loneliness, and psychological distress among youth globally (World Health Organization, 2022).

Following this global trend, South African youth are also facing a mental health crisis. For many South Africans on the cusp of adulthood, poor mental health is worsened by having to navigate an environment characterised by financial pressure and social upheaval. South African Medical Research Council research puts the prevalence of depression at 10.1%, anxiety at 6.7%, and PTSD at 17.6% among children and adolescents, and finds that most never receive care (Bantjes et al., 2025).

Addiction in Higher Education

Understanding the link between addiction in the context of higher education requires a broader understanding of the challenges many young South Africans are navigating today.

For higher education students, these realities are particularly acute. While universities are often viewed as spaces of opportunity and advancement, students do not arrive on campus as blank slates. They arrive with different life experiences, responsibilities, pressures, and expectations. For some, higher education represents a pathway out of poverty. For others, it carries the weight of family expectations, financial responsibility, and the hope of upward social mobility.

Many students are, therefore, navigating two journeys simultaneously: the academic journey of successfully completing a qualification, and the personal journey of managing the complex realities that shape their everyday lives. These realities influence how students experience opportunity, respond to pressure, navigate uncertainty, and pursue success. In this pressure cooker, the temptation to cope through substances or addictive behaviours becomes difficult to ignore.

Research is increasingly highlighting the relationship between adverse experiences, psychological distress, and harmful coping mechanisms (Felitti et al., 1998; World Health Organization, 2022). While students respond to challenges in different ways, addictive behaviours may provide temporary relief from stress, anxiety, loneliness, uncertainty, grief, financial pressure, or emotional distress. In this sense, addiction is often less about the pursuit of pleasure and more about the search for relief, escape, connection, or control (Maté, 2018).

Take, for example, a 2025 Daily Maverick investigation that found students using their NSFAS allowances for online gambling (Goni, 2025). These cases are often framed as poor decision-making, but they should raise broader questions about financial vulnerability, economic pressure, and the appeal of quick financial gain in an uncertain environment.

For institutions, funders, and other stakeholders working toward student success, this distinction matters. Understanding addiction requires looking beyond the destructive behaviour itself and paying closer attention to the conditions that have caused it.

Addiction has the potential to affect concentration, motivation, decision-making, financial stability, relationships, academic performance, and persistence in higher education (Kuss & Griffiths, 2012). Importantly, research has also linked addiction to impaired academic performance, and reduced educational attainment (World Health Organization, 2022; Bulfone et al., 2025).

Too many South African youth are caught in this complex web of addiction. Strenuous environmental factors increase the odds of substance use and addictive behaviours. Addiction worsens students’ overall wellbeing and resilience and increases the chance that they will not complete their qualification.

Addiction, then, should be seen as more than a health concern. It is a student success issue, a youth development issue, and a signal that invites us to better understand the hidden realities shaping student outcomes.

Research has pointed to growing concerns around anxiety, depression, loneliness, and psychological distress among youth globally (World Health Organization, 2022).

The Stories Behind the Data: Reflections from Thrive Student Living

Stakeholders in the higher education sector are increasingly relying on numbers to measure student success. Institutions, funders, and policymakers are generating and drawing on a growing body of data related to student participation, retention, progression, graduation, and wellbeing. These indicators are essential for evaluating performance, identifying challenges, and informing investment decisions.

However, data can only reveal so much.

As Muller (2018) cautions in his study of metric fixation across education and other sectors, the measures most easily quantified are not always the ones that matter most. He argues that an over-reliance on them can draw attention away from the goals they were meant to serve.

Student success indicators may help us understand what is happening, but they cannot always explain why it is happening. They cannot fully capture the lived realities of the students behind the statistics. The pressures, anxieties, responsibilities, relationships, and coping mechanisms that shape students’ daily experiences are far less tangible than the outcomes they produce.

Understanding these realities requires a different vantage point; one that is closer to students’ day-to-day lives. This is where Thrive Student Living brings a valuable perspective to the conversation. Thrive Student Living’s accounts offer a dimension of the student experience that is not always captured through academic outcomes, programme reports, or institutional data. Student accommodation environments are often the first places where the invisible burdens of student life become visible.

Student accommodation environments reveal that many addictive and maladaptive coping behaviours arise from broader emotional, social, economic, and institutional contexts. These behaviours are often less the result of recklessness or moral failure, and more a response to coping, regulation, emotional survival, and the management of overwhelming pressure. Within student accommodation environments, students rarely describe themselves as becoming addicted. More often, the underlying narrative resembles: ‘This is helping me cope,’ ‘This is the only thing that switches my brain off,’ ‘This helps me feel okay,’ ‘This helps me belong,’ ‘I just need to get through this week.’”

Over time, the coping mechanism itself may come to be relied on more and more.

We can draw important lessons from student accommodation environments about the complexities of addiction and the realities underpinning it.

While student accommodation providers are not primarily mental health practitioners or treatment providers, they occupy a unique and pivotal position in the student success ecosystem. Unlike institutional support services, accommodation environments engage with students in the context of daily life. Spaces where students live, socialise, navigate challenges, and recover from setbacks can provide more comfortable settings for students to disclose and unpack their challenges. This proximity creates opportunities to support prevention, early intervention, and holistic student wellbeing.

One of the most significant contributions accommodation environments can make is through early identification. Student distress often becomes visible long before a student accesses formal support services or experiences academic failure. Changes in behaviour, mood, social engagement, or daily functioning frequently emerge within residential environments and may be noticed through ordinary interactions with staff, student leaders, roommates, or peers.

An important theme emerging from Thrive’s student life programmes is the importance of belonging and connection. Students who feel known, included, and connected are more likely to seek help, engage positively with their communities, and demonstrate resilience during periods of pressure. Conversely, students experiencing isolation and social disconnection often appear more vulnerable to emotional distress and maladaptive coping mechanisms, including addiction.

This positions community-building as a critical preventative strategy. Beyond organising activities, community-building involves creating environments where students experience psychological safety, meaningful connection, and a sense of shared identity. Well-attended peer support groups and club activities, where students gather around shared interests, are examples of environments that provide support networks that can strengthen resilience and reduce reliance on unhealthy coping mechanisms.

These observations offer an important reminder for institutions, funders, and policymakers. Behind every retention statistic, graduation rate, and programme outcome is a student navigating a unique set of pressures, responsibilities, aspirations, and challenges. Supporting student success requires looking beyond measuring outcomes and paying attention to the realities that shape these outcomes in the first place.

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