What Workplace Coaching Gets Right That Universities Are Missing: Insights for Higher Ed Mentoring

Introduction

University students today navigate intersecting academic, financial, and social pressures that traditional classroom instruction is poorly equipped to address. Rajasinghe and Fadipe (2026) argue that personal tutoring in UK higher education institutions (HEIs) has historically defaulted to reactive, crisis-driven models that target students already in difficulty rather than proactively supporting holistic development. Student support services are inconsistently delivered and insufficiently inclusive, leaving many learners without meaningful developmental engagement. The authors contend that coaching and mentoring, well-established in commercial learning and development contexts, remain underutilized in HEIs despite strong theoretical alignment with how adults learn and grow.

Theoretical Framework

Drawing on humanist philosophy, andragogy, transformative learning theory, and communities of practice, the authors position coaching as a social, relational process of joint meaning-making between tutors and learners. They argue that coaching and mentoring foster self-directed learning, intrinsic motivation, and critical reflexivity, capacities that classroom-based, outcomes-driven education tends to suppress. Crucially, the authors distinguish between coaching as a transactional tool and coaching as a developmental orientation, one that honors learners as socially and culturally embedded individuals with unique challenges and aspirations.

Case Study

At Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, the authors embedded coaching and mentoring within a BA Management and Human Resources program through a personalization and experiential learning strategy. Four core practices defined this approach: personalization (building trust-based, individualized relationships), consistency (sustained engagement from day one through a dedicated tutor), holistic support (addressing emotional, psychological, and practical needs alongside academic ones), and reflective practice (creating structured space for self-inquiry and meaning-making). Over three years, the program achieved National Student Survey satisfaction scores averaging 94%, with over 70% of students earning a 2:1 (US equivalent of a 3.3 to 3.6 GPA) or above.

Discussion

The authors acknowledge significant structural barriers to scaling this model, including high student-to-staff ratios, inadequate professional training for academics, competing institutional priorities, and the absence of coherent university-wide strategies. They also caution that without inclusive design and sustained institutional commitment, coaching risks reinforcing existing disparities rather than mitigating them. The paper calls for stronger theoretical links between coaching and learning, methodologically diverse empirical research, and leadership investment in training academics as coaches. Social, cultural, and diversity factors influencing student engagement with coaching are identified as underexplored areas requiring further inquiry.

Implications for Mentoring Programs

Practitioners should move away from episodic, reactive support toward sustained, relationship-centered mentoring embedded in program structure from the outset. Personalization and consistency are not aspirational add-ons but foundational conditions for effective mentoring. Programs should equip mentors with coaching competencies, particularly active listening, reflective questioning, and holistic awareness, without necessarily requiring formal certification. Institutions must provide structural support through policy, resource allocation, and leadership backing to prevent mentoring from being treated as supplementary workload. For youth-serving and community-based mentoring contexts, the NBS model reinforces the evidence that relational continuity and intrinsic motivation are more powerful drivers of development than any single intervention.

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