Last month, Daii’yaHnna Fleming posted a video of her move-in day at Southern University in Louisiana. As a bleary-eyed rising freshman, she lugged a half-dozen candy-hued suitcases on her trip from Las Vegas to Baton Rouge. After arriving, she began to settle into her new life on campus, stocking up on school supplies and setting up a side business doing makeup from her dorm room.
Then the trouble began. The ample walking across campus aggravated her health issues, and Fleming didn’t feel safe commuting to her job near campus. One night, she decided to join friends for an off-campus party. “I had never really been to a party, and I really just did not like it at all,” Fleming, 17, said. “I got really fed up with everything.”
On the way back to her dorm, Fleming texted her mother and told her she was coming home for good. She had been in college for two weeks.
In a TikTok video about her decision to switch to her university’s online program, Fleming panned over her dorm room. “I’m not gonna force myself to be uncomfortable and unsafe, ’cause randos think I should be,” she wrote in the caption, adding, “I don’t care about the college experience. I just want my degree.”
In the thousands of comments underneath her post, as well as under similar viral videos of other students moving out or dropping out and sharing it online, a firestorm of debate has been playing out: Are Gen Z students too unwilling to face discomfort, to the point of missing out on a formative experience? Or are older generations valorizing struggle?
Though leaving campus early is nothing new — and the rate of college dropouts has declined slightly in recent years — social media has put a magnifying glass on students’ struggles and prompted a wider discussion about generational differences. As they face shrinking federal financial aid and a tough job market with no guarantees, some say they are reconsidering whether college is worth the staggering tuition fees. Others say they are switching to online school or becoming commuter students.
Many of the videos, like Fleming’s, focus on the mental health impacts, saying they feel anxious and overwhelmed. One student mentioned a towed car and more homework than they expected. Another expressed concern about wasting tuition money on an experience they disliked that affected their mental health.
The debate touched a nerve.
In response videos, millennials and Gen X-ers have been pleading with students to hold on and tough it out.
“Everything worth having is not easy,” said Ebony Simpson, a mother of a college sophomore who posted one of those videos.
She said that students needed to put themselves out there. “It’s for you to sit up and say, ‘Oh, they’re having a cookout, let me go,’” Simpson said.
Her daughter, Adrianna Bankston, said she struggled as a freshman last year at a Georgia university. The idea of leaving “was a thought that we all had when we first got here,” Bankston, 19, said. She didn’t leave her room much during that first week, she said. But she had a realization: “I need a friend group. I need to go out and do stuff.”
She pushed herself to meet people at parties and campus events, and she’s learned a lot. “I did have fun,” she said. “I found out not everybody is your cup of tea.” She said she now had a busy social life and great people around her.
Rates of college dropouts have declined: According to a report from the Education Data Initiative, 22.9 percent of all students who entered college as freshmen in fall 2024 did not return in fall 2025, down from a prepandemic average of around 24 percent.
Yet the videos highlight real issues for those working to fight college attrition. “Kids are not weak,” said Sarah Manville, an assistant dean and adviser at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “They’re extremely resilient — but there’s something about this phenomenon that they cannot persist through.”
Feeling homesick in the first few weeks is normal, but Manville said she noticed some younger students were reluctant to seek help. “My concern is students are not giving themselves enough of a chance to be successful,” she said, “and that’s where I think that fear-based decision making comes in.”
Michael Williams, a New York City-based college access and success professional, said, “I’ve noticed a definite dip this year and last year, compared to prior years, in how socially adjusted and how much, like, social emotional competency this set has compared to the prior classes.”
Students also face grim job prospects, amid worries of A.I. encroaching on entry-level jobs, and steep tuition. “The barriers to entry just keep compounding in this particular moment,” Williams said.
The costs of dropping out or moving home will vary from school to school, but student loans are generally easier to cancel in the first two weeks.
Fleming said she had not yet paid the fee for room and board for this year. Another student who posted a video on TikTok said in a comment that she had received a refund from her university after leaving.
Back home in Las Vegas, Fleming said she felt good about her decision: “If I would have stayed longer, it would have made everything harder.”
She’s doing well in online business management classes and has dreams of law school. But she hasn’t discounted the idea of returning to Southern: She’d like to spend more time with her suite mate, who’s now a close friend, and other classmates she met from her stint in Baton Rouge. But if she returns, perhaps next year, she plans to live off campus.
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