Unheard Voices: A Qualitative Inquiry into Academic Stress and Emotional Challenges in Public Colleges

Abstract

Pakistan has a state-owned public college system that has a very limited set of resources, and therefore the stressors students face there have not been studied yet. This paper was set out with the aim of investigating the academic and emotional issues confronting students in colleges in these types of settings by trying to obtain lived experiences of students. The qualitative design was used where the purposively chosen students were interviewed using the semi-structured interviews. Theme analysis of the transcribed data revealed the formulation of three main themes, namely Academic Pressure in a Resource-Deprived Setting, The Emotional Toll of the Expectations of the Parents, and Fear of Failure and Social Shame, which were subsequently divided into two sub-themes. Outdated pedagogy, poor infrastructure, parental support under conditions, and academic failure as a stigma were identified as some of the main reasons why students experience any level of psychological pressure. The results indicate a sophisticated interaction of both systemic educational constraints together with sociocultural assumptions that lead to emotional burnout and deprivation of having access to psychological release. This research finds that institutional reshaping, teaching pedagogies, and psychological support networks are sorely lacking to combat the unnoticed emotional and academic pressures of the learners in the state colleges of Pakistan