Supporting Students at Risk in Higher Education. An interview with Elisa Gamba.
- Student Engagement Team
- 19 hours ago
- 8 min read
Interviewing by: Irina Samson - SET Europe board chair
Editing by: Sara Khosrowjerdi - SET Europe Communications
Q: Your research focuses on people whose educational paths have often been disrupted by conflict, displacement, or persecution. Was there a particular experience, encounter, or question that led you to focus on this topic?
A: My choice of research topic was undoubtedly shaped by nearly twenty years working with international students at two leading Italian universities, which let me experience first-hand the challenges of inclusion they faced. But the roots run deeper. I have always cared deeply about rights. Even as a child, I found myself wondering how something as arbitrary as one's place of birth could so profoundly determine the opportunities one is able to aspire to. No one chooses where they are born, and every child deserves an equal chance.
That conviction has only grown stronger since I became a mother. I already sense that my daughters, following their mother's example, will travel wherever life takes them: and I hope they will be welcomed with the same care I have always tried to offer the international students who came through my office.
Education sits at the heart of this for me: a proper education opens doors that would otherwise stay closed, and everyone deserves the chance to walk through them.
Q: The term "students at risk" is increasingly used in higher education, but it can mean different things to different people. How do you define students at risk, and how does this category differ from refugees, international students, or other vulnerable student groups?
A: I use "students at risk" to describe learners whose access to and continuation in higher education is threatened by circumstances beyond their control (persecution, conflict, forced displacement, or systemic exclusion), even where they do not hold formal refugee status. The category deliberately cuts across legal definitions. A refugee is defined by a legal protection status; an international student is defined by mobility and, usually, by choice and resources. "Students at risk" centres on vulnerability and the obstruction of the right to education rather than on a juridical label. The strength of the term is its inclusiveness; its weakness is its vagueness, which is why institutions need to define operationally who they mean when they use it.
Q: When discussing displacement and protection, higher education is often overlooked compared to more immediate humanitarian needs. Why does access to university matter for students at risk?
A: Higher education is often treated as a luxury that can wait until "more urgent" needs are met, but this framing is misleading. For displaced young people, access to university is itself a form of protection: it offers structure, purpose, a pathway to self-reliance, and a way to rebuild their identity. It counters the prolonged limbo that characterises protracted displacement. It also has a multiplier effect: graduates contribute to host communities and, where possible, to reconstruction. Denying access risks creating a lost generation, with consequences that long outlast the immediate emergency. Education is a human right, not a reward to be deferred.
Q: Many universities celebrate scholarships and admissions programmes as success stories. Why is admission only the beginning, and what barriers tend to emerge once students are already inside the university system?
A: Admission and scholarships are visible, celebratory milestones, and that is precisely why they dominate the narrative: they are easy to count and to communicate. But they measure entry, not inclusion. Once inside, students encounter barriers that are far less visible: language demands, unfamiliar academic conventions, bureaucratic procedures designed for domestic students, difficulty in credential recognition, financial precarity, isolation, and a lack of psychological and social support. Many programmes have strong intake figures but weak retention and completion data, and unfortunately universities are often reluctant to track the latter. Real inclusion is measured by whether students can progress, complete, and feel they belong, not by whether they were let in.
Q: During your research, was there a story, testimony, or experience shared by a student that changed the way you think about inclusion or support in higher education?
A: Yes, there is an aspect that surfaced repeatedly across several interviews and, to this day, has found no real solution: the separation of families.
What struck me was not only the difficulty of the decision, but the impossible nature of the choice itself: to pursue an education and a future, or to remain with one's family. No one should have to choose between the two. We tend to picture the "student at risk" as a young, mobile individual with no ties, but many are parents, partners, people with responsibilities and loved ones left behind. Universities, unfortunately, are simply not equipped to welcome families: housing, schooling for children, support for a spouse, all of this falls outside what an admissions office or a scholarship can provide. And so a programme designed to protect a person can, at the same time, fracture a family, separating children from a parent for years. It is hard to imagine a deeper injustice within something meant to be an act of care.
This experience changed the way I think about inclusion. It taught me that we cannot evaluate support only through the lens of the individual student and their academic trajectory; we have to see the whole person, embedded in relationships and obligations that do not disappear at the border. And it showed me, very concretely, why universities cannot and should not act alone. A university cannot resolve a family reunification procedure or arrange housing and schooling for a student's children, but a network can. This is exactly where partnerships with NGOs and civil society make the difference: organisations with the legal expertise, the local knowledge, and the continuity to address what lies beyond the university's reach.
Q: You use the concept of "multi-level governance" in your research. For readers unfamiliar with the term, what does it mean in practice when supporting students at risk?
A: Multi-level governance describes how responsibility for a policy area is distributed across different levels: supranational, national, regional, and local, as well as horizontally across public bodies, NGOs, and civil society. In practice, supporting students at risk depends on all these levels aligning, since no single actor controls all the levers. Effective support therefore requires coordination across levels, not heroic effort at one of them.
Q: Why is it important for universities to collaborate with local governments, NGOs, and civil society organisations rather than trying to address these challenges on their own?
A: Following directly from the above: the barriers students face are not all academic, so they cannot all be solved within the university. Legal status, housing, healthcare, mental health support, language training, and community integration sit largely outside a university's remit and expertise. NGOs and civil society organisations often hold the trust, the on-the-ground knowledge, and the continuity that universities lack. Partnership distributes the load, avoids duplication, and embeds the student in a wider support network, which is far more resilient than dependence on a single office or a single committed staff member, whose departure can collapse the whole arrangement.
Q: Looking across Europe, are there universities or programmes that you consider particularly successful in supporting refugee students or students at risk? What makes their approach effective?
A: The example I find most compelling is the Italian University Corridors for Refugees programme (UNICORE). The strength of UNICORE lies in the combination of strong national coordination and dense local networks: each participating university builds its own ecosystem of mentors, tutors, host families, and community organisations around the student. It treats access and belonging as a single, continuous process rather than two separate problems, and it distributes responsibility across actors who each contribute what they do best. That is exactly the multi-level governance I argue for in my research, made operational.
Looking beyond Europe, there is one example that cannot be left out: the Student Refugee Program (SRP) run by the World University Service of Canada (WUSC). It is widely regarded as a benchmark, and for two reasons in particular. First, its long-term horizon: rather than offering a temporary scholarship, the programme resettles students as permanent residents from the moment they arrive, opening a genuine pathway towards citizenship and a future, not merely a degree. Second, its remarkable mobilisation of the campus community through local committees, which turns the host community itself into the engine of inclusion.
Q: Your research connects inclusion not only to access but also to belonging. What does "belonging" mean in a university context for students who have experienced displacement, insecurity, or exclusion?
A: Belonging is the difference between being present in a university and being part of it. For students who have experienced displacement, belonging means being recognised as a full member of the academic community: not as a beneficiary, a case, or a category. There is a real danger here. Refugees and students at risk are too often cast solely as recipients of charity: objects of a generosity that institutions can display to their own credit, while the contribution they can make to the host university is rarely taken seriously. This framing, however well-intentioned, keeps students in a position of permanent indebtedness and confirms their status as outsiders being helped, rather than members who belong.
Belonging, by contrast, is relational and affective: it means feeling that one's presence is expected and valued, that one can contribute and not only receive, that one's prior knowledge, experience, and identity are legitimate and have something to offer. Access opens the door; belonging determines whether the student can stand fully inside the room. Without it, inclusion remains formal and fragile, and students may withdraw even when no formal barrier remains. This is why I frame inclusion as moving "from arrival to belonging".
Q: We are witnessing conflicts, political instability, and displacement in many parts of the world. How do these developments change the responsibilities of universities toward students at risk?
A: The scale and visibility of displacement, across multiple regions simultaneously, make it harder for universities to treat support for students at risk as exceptional or temporary. The responsibility shifts from ad hoc, crisis-driven responses (a special intake after one particular conflict) towards structural preparedness: permanent pathways, standing partnerships, flexible recognition procedures, and dedicated funding that can respond to whichever crisis emerges next. It also raises a question of consistency and equity: universities are increasingly scrutinised for responding generously to some displaced populations and not others. The underlying responsibility is to build durable systems rather than reactive gestures.
Q: If you could recommend three practical changes that universities could implement tomorrow to better support students at risk, what would they be?
A: First, track the right data: stop celebrating admissions alone and start systematically monitoring retention, progression, and completion for students at risk. You cannot fix what you do not measure.
Second, build strong networks in the local territory. Universities need the courage to work in partnership, and this should not be mistaken for an admission of weakness. No institution holds all the levers that determine whether a student at risk can live, study, and thrive, so the willingness to share responsibility with local governments, NGOs, and civil society is strategic.
Third, build flexibility into procedures: adapt credential recognition, enrolment deadlines, documentation requirements, and language thresholds, so that rules designed for domestic students do not inadvertently exclude those they were never written for.
Elisa Gamba is a PhD candidate in Human Rights, Society and Multi-level Governance at the University of Padua, where her doctoral research focuses on the inclusion of refugees and students at risk in the Italian higher education system. She has nearly two decades of professional experience in Italian university administration, including roles dedicated to international students, refugee programmes and university corridors. Her recent publications appear in international and Italian journals, addressing themes such as institutional support for displaced students, multi-level governance of resilience, and equity, diversity and inclusion in European universities. She is currently involved in several European projects on refugee education.