Student Wellbeing Crisis: What Schools Get Wrong (The Deans’ Roundtable Podcast, April 2026)

Are today’s students more successful—or more overwhelmed than ever? In this episode of The Table Podcast by The Deans’ Roundtable, Bridget Johnson sits down with Dr. Denise Pope, Senior Lecturer at Stanford and co-founder of Challenge Success, to explore what decades of research reveal about student stress, belonging, and engagement. Drawing from data on over 350,000 students, Dr. Pope explains why so many kids are “doing school” instead of truly learning—and how over-scheduling, academic pressure, and misaligned incentives are driving a growing wellbeing crisis. They also explore a surprising connection: how the rise of AI is exposing deeper questions about the purpose of school and what meaningful learning actually looks like.