When a student takes, or attempts to take his or her own life, public conversation is often shadowed by speculative narratives. The question quietly shifts from what went wrong to why this happened. Even social media users rush to frame the story, often with relentless certainty, producing explanations that are easy to consume but rarely grounded in care.
Recent suicide incidents at the University of Lahore (UoL) have deeply unsettled the academic community. In the first case, tensions with faculty were reported. In the second, a personal relationship was cited. These narratives circulated rapidly across social media platforms, allowing citizens to form quick conclusions about the state of higher education. Although we have already published an op-ed on suicide in higher education focusing on institutional responsibility, the recent suicide attempt by twenty-one-year-old Fatima, a D Pharmacy student at UoL, raises deeper and more unsettling questions that cannot be ignored. This op-ed draws on our several years of teaching experience with Generation Z, as well as sustained post-event discussions with students aimed at understanding the underlying issues.
Higher education today is shaped by a widening generational divide. Our parents and teachers grew up and were nurtured within social and institutional environments marked by silence, patience, and compliance. Many learned to suppress emotional responses, adjust expectations, and accept authority without resistance. For a long time, in academic spaces, endurance was normalised, while emotional difficulty was rarely acknowledged.
Gen Z enters university under very different conditions. Their formative years have unfolded amid economic instability, intense competition, constant digital exposure, and an increasingly open global conversation about mental health. They are more aware of their emotional states, more willing to articulate distress, and less inclined to interpret silence as strength. This reflects a profound shift in how learning, identity, and wellbeing are experienced on our campuses.
Gen Z values a dialogic clarity and feedback about their learning curves. They accept challenge but reject fear-based pedagogy. Mental health, meanwhile, is still treated as peripheral in our universities.
Rising tuition fees, growing campus costs, limited employment opportunities after graduation, and national-level inflation have further intensified this anxiety. The promise that education guarantees stability now feels fragile. Universities have become spaces where these uncertainties accumulate daily.
A conflict with a teacher is rarely just about grades, attendance, or classroom rules. It often feels like a challenge to dignity, voice, and future. When authority is exercised without explanation or empathy, such encounters become destabilising. What earlier generations learned to endure quietly, Gen Z experiences as exclusion.
This does not mean that Gen Z expects lenience or the absence of challenge. They seek engagement that recognises them as learners with distinct perspectives. They want to be welcomed, not frightened, heard, not silenced, guided, not intimidated. These expectations point toward an unavoidable pedagogical shift.
Needless to say, learning is both cognitive and relational. Students engage most deeply in classrooms where questions can be asked, mistakes acknowledged, and difficulty expressed without fear of humiliation. Yet many university classrooms remain governed by traditional or inherited pedagogies that are hierarchical, rigid, and resistant to dialogue. Emotional expression is often treated as a disruption rather than an engagement.
This mismatch between teaching practices and learning needs is widening. Gen Z values a dialogic clarity and feedback about their learning curves. They accept challenge but reject fear-based pedagogy.
Mental health, meanwhile, is still treated as peripheral in our universities. It is typically delegated to counselling units rather than embedded in an academic aura. When support systems are limited, overstretched, or stigmatised, students are left to navigate distress alone. Silence then becomes dangerous. What remains unspoken intensifies until it becomes unmanageable.
Many educators still believe that endurance builds character, authority ensures discipline, and emotional distance preserves professionalism. Gen Z challenges these beliefs not through open rebellion but through withdrawal, anxiety, and disorientation.
This is not an argument for lowering standards. It is an argument for rethinking authority. Authority must be relational rather than punitive. Assessment must be transparent, feedback constructive, and communication responsive. Faculty development must include emotional literacy and an understanding of generational shifts in learning psychology.
Such reflection also demands humility. The fact that earlier generations survived emotionally grim educational environments does not mean those environments were healthy. Survival should never be mistaken for well-being. If education is meant to cultivate intellect, it must evolve with the emotional realities of its learners. Educators ought to encourage students to engage in additional consultations beyond the classroom through designated counselling or office hours. Suicide or attempted suicide should not be reduced to isolated tragedies or fleeting moments of mourning. They ask whether universities are listening to silence, withdrawal, and the changing language of distress. They ask whether long-held beliefs about resilience and success are being re-examined. And they ask whether learning is being understood not only as an academic pursuit but as a profoundly human experience.
The question, then, is not whether Gen Z is different. It is whether our educational practices are prepared to understand that difference.
The first author is a Professor of English at Riphah International University, Lahore. He is a lead guest editor at Emerald and Springer publishing.
The second author is an Assistant Professor of English at Govt. Graduate College for Women, Samanabad, Lahore