Coaching in higher education: evidence and experience

A recent systematic review by Pendar Fazel, Karolina Eszter Kovács, and Judit Kovács (2026) in Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice examines 23 empirical studies of coaching interventions with university students, published between 2003 and 2023. The review finds consistent positive or mixed-positive outcomes across the included research, particularly in academic persistence, self-regulation, and wellbeing, while also drawing attention to gaps in the way coaching is described, evaluated, and situated within university support systems.

The authors distinguish coaching from academic advising, tutoring, and therapeutic support, even though actual university practice often brings these activities into close proximity. Coaching is described as an individualised relationship that can support students in developing agency, self-understanding, and forms of self-directed learning that extend beyond a particular academic task. This includes goal-setting, planning, monitoring progress, and adjusting a course of action when circumstances change.

What the review shows

The strongest evidence concerns academic persistence and the development of self-regulatory capacities. Several of the reviewed studies associate coaching with higher retention rates, improved academic performance, and increased graduation rates. Other studies describe changes in planning, task organisation, and time management, especially among students with ADHD or learning disabilities, for whom the everyday organisation of academic work can present a sustained challenge.

The review also identifies positive effects on wellbeing. Coaching interventions were associated in several studies with reduced stress and anxiety, alongside greater self-efficacy and a more developed capacity to pursue personally meaningful goals. Peer-coaching programmes appear particularly relevant in this regard, since they can connect academic support with belonging and social recognition within an institution.

These findings are encouraging, although the article remains appropriately cautious about the evidence base. The studies use different coaching models, different outcomes, and different forms of delivery. Some provide detailed information about coach qualifications, session frequency, and theoretical grounding; others provide very little. The authors therefore call for greater transparency, especially concerning what is meant by coaching in a given programme and how the intervention is organised.

My own long-term experience as an educator in higher education strongly supports the central orientation of the review. Students rarely arrive at a university simply needing more information about deadlines or course requirements. Many face the more complex task of learning how to organise themselves within an institution whose expectations, rhythms, and implicit rules may initially remain opaque. They need to understand how they learn, where their attention becomes dispersed, and which forms of support allow them to sustain their work over time.

In this context, I have repeatedly seen the importance of conversations that make room for reflection on the student’s own patterns of learning and participation. A student may present an apparently practical problem—procrastination, difficulty completing written work, uncertainty about a course of study—while the deeper issue concerns their relationship to authority, an internalised fear of failure, or a lack of belonging within the university environment. Coaching offers a structure for approaching such questions without reducing them to personal deficiencies.

This is especially relevant for students whose educational trajectory differs from that of the institutional majority. First-generation students, international students, and students from financially insecure backgrounds may need to navigate forms of academic life that were never self-evident within their previous environment. The review notes that these groups remain underrepresented in the current research, despite the fact that financial pressure, language, and institutional culture can shape their academic experience in decisive ways.

An ecosystem of support

My experience has also convinced me that coaching should form part of a larger ecosystem of support within higher education. Coaching, counselling, and mentoring each address distinct dimensions of student experience, and a university that takes student development seriously needs to make all three accessible, clearly differentiated, and connected through appropriate referral pathways.

Coaching provides a reflective and future-oriented space in which students can examine their goals, habits, and decisions. It is particularly useful when a student needs to develop self-regulation, clarify a direction, or understand a recurring pattern in their academic life. A coaching conversation can help transform a diffuse feeling of being overwhelmed into a more precise account of what requires attention and what forms of action remain possible.

Counselling has a different scope and requires a trained professional with the capacity to work with psychological distress, emotional crises, and personal difficulties that affect a student’s capacity to study or participate in university life. Students may encounter depression, anxiety, grief, trauma, or severe relational conflict during their studies. Such experiences require a setting in which clinical risk can be assessed and where therapeutic methods can be used appropriately. The review identifies substantial inconsistency in the existing research concerning mental-health screening and referral arrangements, making this distinction especially important.

Mentoring offers another form of support. A mentor can share experience, institutional knowledge, and professional understanding with someone who is earlier in their educational or career trajectory. Mentoring can be particularly valuable when students need help interpreting disciplinary cultures, considering possible career paths, or gaining access to networks that are otherwise unfamiliar to them. For students whose families or communities have little direct experience of university life, such knowledge can be highly consequential.

These forms of support can overlap in practice, yet their primary orientations remain distinct. A mentor may notice that a student requires counselling; a counsellor may recognise that coaching could support a return to academic structure once acute distress has eased. A coach may identify an area in which mentoring would provide relevant knowledge or connection. The quality of the ecosystem depends on the capacity of practitioners to recognise these boundaries and to collaborate without treating any single form of support as sufficient for every situation.

Coaching and institutional responsibility

The article invites universities to think about coaching as part of their wider educational responsibility. Academic success is often discussed through performance indicators, completion rates, and employability. These measures remain relevant, yet they tell only part of the story. Students also need conditions in which they can develop a workable relationship to learning, make informed decisions about their path, and find forms of participation that do not depend entirely on already possessing the codes of higher education.

Coaching can contribute to these conditions when it is embedded within a clearly articulated support structure. It needs appropriate referral pathways for students whose difficulties require counselling or clinical care, and it needs practitioners who can recognise the limits of their own role. The review finds substantial inconsistency in the way mental-health considerations are handled across existing studies, which points toward a central ethical question for universities: how can they provide accessible developmental support while maintaining clear boundaries and responsibilities?

Reference

Fazel, P., Kovács, K. E., & Kovács, J. (2026). Coaching in higher education: A systematic review of coaching intervention on university students. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 19(1), 173–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/17521882.2025.2601539