After four years of steady enrollment numbers, UNC Asheville’s psychology department has seen a sudden 37% spike in declared majors this year. Students say this shows the lasting effects of the COVID pandemic and an increase in their generation’s interest to understand themselves and others.
Pia Vega knew she wanted to help people and psychology was her answer. Through her high school counseling and mental health elective, she knew the mind could be studied and understood. She said she wanted to help people who went through similar mental health struggles as she did and she hopes to use her psychology degree to help others through struggles she had to navigate alone.
“During the COVID pandemic, many people within my generation developed mental illnesses, myself included,” Vega said.
This year, Vega joined 255 other UNCA students in declaring a major within the psychology department. This contributes to a 37% increase in psychology majors this year that breaks a four year pattern of declarations hovering around 180. Mark Harvey, chair of the psychology department at UNCA, said the reason for the sudden change isn’t as clear as the change itself.
“I would have to survey all the majors directly and ask why they are majoring in psychology. So technically, my answer is, I don’t know,” Harvey said. “I’ve been looking at the numbers myself and wondering what is going on.”
Harvey said from his perspective there doesn’t seem to be a clear reason for the sudden increase in declarations this year. He said the psychology department has done nothing differently in their marketing or promotion toward students. But Vega said from a student perspective, there are many reasons her generation has chosen psychology.
“The increase of AI has been taking jobs away from other people, other departments and other areas. There’s always a need for people within the psych department,” Vega said. “Its the mind, it’s how people think, how people do things, how people react. It can’t be answered by an algorithm.”
Other students, like junior Isabella Bascom, also said the increase could be explained through her generation’s collective experience of the COVID pandemic.
“This generation dealt with COVID in their formative years,” Bascom said. “Bad Mental health was so normalized especially on social media. It has a toll on people.”
Bascom said psychology specifically resonates with students in her generation. COVID being the main point in time to blame for this, living formative years online, isolated and overwhelmed by the world around them. Students at UNCA are choosing psychology more this year than in previous years, but are also confident and sticking to their decision. Harvey said the quality of the department at UNCA would make a major in the psychology department a good decision for any student.
“Our faculty here in our department of psychology are very intelligent, dedicated and they really care about the outcomes of the students,” Harvey said. “I think that makes a difference.”
While some students switch to psychology after taking introductory courses, Harvey said first year students mostly arrive at UNCA already knowing they want to study psychology.
“Students mostly know what they want,” Harvey said. “I get a few people who switch majors.”
Harvey said the department’s community, small class sizes and easy faculty to student contact could matter more to students and may be the department’s biggest selling point.
“I would say that this department is really good at building community,” Harvey said. “The students themselves tend to communicate a lot with each other and develop their own community.”
Harvey said that the sense of community within the department seems to be a bigger part of what keeps students in the major once they arrive. Vega said she chose UNCA before choosing the department, but found psychology at the university was more personal and encouraging than other options. For sophomore Olivia Brock, she said that the sudden rise in psychology majors this year shows what her generation truly cares about.
“There’s a lot going on in the world, there’s a lot of political turmoil right now. A lot of people are really unhappy” Brock said. “I think people feel like they don’t have any control over what’s happening and we want to help people that need it.”
Brock said that her generation of students feel pulled toward a field that allows them to understand people and help them. She said psychology feels like a major that offers a good purpose to students. Like Vega, Brock said she also found psychology through a high school class that left a lasting impression.
“I took an intro psychology class in high school and I thought it was really interesting,” Brock said. “I thought that maybe I wanted to go into psychology, a field where I could help people and make more of a difference. I felt psychology was a field that has more compassion to it.”
Brock said her generation’s emotional strain from the current stressful political climate makes students want to study psychology to understand themselves and others in a more analytical way.
“There are a lot of people that are really hurting and going through a lot of things because of political divide and people in positions of power,” Brock said. “Whatever your political beliefs align with, I don’t think there’s any stance you can take that doesn’t believe that people need help.”
Brock said that her generation is more emotionally open than older generations and it could be an explanation to why her generation is more attracted to the study of psychology than past generations.
“I think our generation definitely is more compassionate and cares about people a lot. Our generation is a lot more open minded to mental health,” Brock said. “That’s the main reason people major in psychology, they deeply care about people and they want to help them.”
She said majors show what students value and right now students feel understanding mental health and helping others who struggle with it is what students feel is important right now. Brock said students know people need help and they increasingly want to provide it.
“I really enjoy the psychology department here,” Brock said. “Everyone is just very passionate about what they do. The teachers, the students. I feel very supported in my major here.”
Harvey said that support is what makes the psychology department at UNCA uniquely quality. He said students connect with each other and their shared curiosity. Why this year’s class chose psychology at record rates may remain partly a mystery. But for the students who made that choice, the meaning behind it feels clear.
“I didn’t want other people to struggle just because I did,” Vega said. “I want to help people and guide them.”
