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The Quiet Decline of the RA
- Cam Bestwick
- Oct 1
- 16 min read
Across the world’s universities, a quiet but consistent shift is underway in the Student Housing & Residential Education (SHARE) sector: the student leadership roles that once defined residential life — the resident assistant or advisor (the 'RA'), the floor tutor, the senior resident, and their many close cousins — are losing their lustre.
Once bright and highly coveted, these roles that felt so essential to building and sustaining a captivating residential learning community, are no longer shining as they once did.
This may come as a shock to many. For decades, these roles seemed impossible to do without, but now they are dying out. And while they may not become entirely extinct — as the preconditions for their success still exist in pockets of the SHARE sector — they will increasingly become a quaint minority in a world that is, and has already been, moving on.
This is the central finding an international study we recently conducted to explore and uncover (quite literally) 'what on Earth is happening to student leader roles?'
Our Investigation:
A whirlwind world tour of RA evolution
We interviewed twelve deeply knowledgeable SHARE sector leaders, most of whom were accountable leaders of university housing systems across Australia, England, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, and the United States. [1] We paired this with literature scans and our own desktop research into practices at an even wider range of countries. [2]
We were extremely fortunate to speak with these subjects. [3] Almost all had overseen university residential systems for decades, not just years, and had witnessed multiple evolutions of student leader and pastoral care models rise and fade. Together, they offered a wide-angle view of how student leadership has evolved in the quarter century since the early 2000s.
We had expected to find significant differences in their approaches to student leadership. We were seeking contrasting perspectives we could use to generate a wide range of options for our client: a university undertaking an extremely open-minded review of its own structures and the role of students within them.
Instead, a quite striking pattern emerged. We could see that, across residential systems with very different histories, cultures, resources, and wider institutional and national policy settings, they were all grappling with similar challenges and arriving at similar conclusions. These similarities far outweighed their differences and, the more data we collected, the clearer this became.
across residential systems with very different histories, cultures, resources, and wider institutional and national policy settings, they were all grappling with similar challenges and arriving at similar conclusions.
These insights proved invaluable in helping our client rethink their model, which is now undergoing significant change. Given the wide interest in the topic and the rarity of global primary data like this, we had hoped to present our findings at sector conferences. Sadly, this hasn't eventuated yet. But we are against the idea of keeping such useful information on a shelf, so we have prepared this high-level summary to ensure the information can spread.
What We Found:
It would be a mistake to view the evolving RA role in isolation. From this perspective, the story might seem like one of pure decline. But that is too simplistic. Every role evolves over time. The versions of any role experienced by past generations inevitably ‘decline’ as contexts change. The role itself then, is therefore not a useful unit of analysis.
This is, in fact, a story of adaptation — driven by demand, results, and risk. All of which were, in turn, shaped by one big underlying shift: the changing profile of young people who live in university residences. This has shaped, on average, the pool of talent stepping into these roles, how they approach their responsibilities, and who they serve.
The most significant consequence of this change for student leadership systems has been that ever fewer students put themselves forward for such roles. Those who do step up come with different backgrounds, expectations, and needs than those in the past. In response, university leaders have had to adjust not only the roles themselves, but also the systems, processes, and supporting structures around them.
In fact, the key outcome of this adaptation has been a bifurcation of the historical RA layer. What was once a single layer of student leaders has split into two distinct layers: a more professionalised layer above, and a low-stakes, low-pressure, largely volunteer layer beneath it. Each functions very differently from the layer it has replaced.
[T]he key outcome of this adaptation has been a bifurcation of the historical RA layer. What was once a single layer of student leaders has split into two distinct layers
We describe the observable changes as ‘big shifts’ below. And while each shift has its own characteristics, they are all effectively reactions to this single underlying change in today’s student population. Let’s look at each of them in turn.
Big Shift # 1: From Signing Up to Sizing Up
In every story we heard about the evolution of student leadership, there was a clear turning point — the moment change was no longer optional — which came when senior leaders accepted they could no longer fill their student leadership teams comfortably, and sometimes at all!
Where there was once a large surplus of applicants, often many multiples of the positions available, this has steadily dwindled. it means the formerly competitive process that afforded management with their pick of eager and high-potential young people has, in many places, become a scramble just to fill the roster
For some, the turning point came when there was no longer a surplus. For others, it wasn't until the roles were vacant. But either way, this has been the consistent catalyst to redefine the roles.
Across the world, leaders offered a similar diagnosis for declining applications: they say students are far more deliberate about whether or not to take on these roles. Where earlier generations might have jumped at the chance for a leadership opportunity or a paid position, students today are more strategic. They weigh it up, carefully and consciously, across several fronts, which we have summarised as:
Pay and perks: Will it be worth it financially? What's the time commitment? What do I get in return? Is that a fair exchange? Will it prevent me from taking on a better role if one comes up?
Career value: Will this help me get where I want to go? Will the experience be recognised in my target profession? Would I be better off doing a different type of student role, like an internship directly in my target industry?
Wellbeing: Can I realistically take this on without becoming overwhelmed? Will it stretch me too far?
The final one is particularly interesting. Young people today are well aware that new responsibilities come with strain. They try to forecast that strain upfront and estimate if it is within their capacity before committing. In the past, students tended to discover the stress during the role and adjusted (or quit) along the way. Now, if the strain looks too high, many will decide not to start.
Where earlier generations might have jumped at the chance for a leadership opportunity or a paid position, students today are more strategic. They weigh it up, carefully and consciously
Overall, students are comparing the option of leadership roles — including the option of doing none — more critically than ever. They are weighing the time, stress, and expectations against the short- and long-term benefits to judge the exchange taking place. And when the roles don't stack up, they increasingly stay empty.
Big Shift # 2: From a Service to an Exchange
The era of the volunteer mindset is fading.
While the RA-and-equivalent roles have rarely been without compensation, students had previously approached them with more of a volunteer spirit. They wanted to serve. To be useful. To strengthen a community they loved. To give back, or pay forward the support their own RA had given them.
Of course, a slice of student leaders still think this way, but they are no longer the norm. They are a shrinking minority.
Increasingly, student leaders have come to their roles with a more transactional frame. Rather assuming or trusting they will benefit personally from taking on a leadership role, they want to be clear about it upfront. And whereas personal benefits were once a spillover effect of serving their community, those benefits are now at the centre of the frame. Students want to understand the return — both short-term (like pay, perks, experience) and long-term (career value, transferable skills) — before they sign on.
For SHARE sector leaders this shift has meant that, when the average member of a team thinks more transactionally, the culture has changed, and your roles must evolve with it.
This evolution has led a lot of university leaders to formalise student leadership roles, ultimately making them more like jobs than civic service. Role titles are clearer, responsibilities are defined. Formal contracts, position descriptions, training programs, and performance evaluations are now common.
Recruitment materials have followed suit. The old pitch 'serve your community, make a difference' has been replaced by 'build your career, develop transferable skills'. This is a logical evolution and, in many ways, is long overdue.
But it also exposes a gap. A student doing a paid internship in their chosen field doesn’t need to argue that the skills are transferable. For leadership roles like RAs, that link is far less direct, and much more care will be needed to continue re-establishing its transferability and relevance going forward.
university leaders [have been led] to formalise student leadership roles, ultimately making them more like jobs than civic service.... The old pitch 'serve your community, make a difference' has been replaced by 'build your career, develop transferable skills'.
One valid concern we discussed with these leaders was that, even when this new approach 'works,' it is something of a Pyrrhic victory. While, indeed, it helps fill and clarify roles, it continues to shift the motivational centre further away from service.
Big Shift # 3: From Stretched to Supported
By default, RA-style roles have long been considered an excellent source of personal and professional development. This was because the roles carried a huge breadth of responsibility, given the typical age and prior life and work experience of the role-holders. Learning how to hold that much responsibility was seen as a crucible where maturity, judgement, and resilience were forged.
At some point, however, it stopped working. The assumption no longer held.
Across almost every context we examined — with only a single exception — two themes emerged:
Student leadership roles now contain less responsibility than the past; and
The students in those roles need more support to handle the residual responsibilities. [4]
Learning how to hold that much responsibility was seen as a crucible where maturity, judgement, and resilience were forged... [but] student leadership roles now contain less responsibility than the past
Not only are the roles (mostly) no longer responsible for supervising hundreds of students and hundreds of millions of dollars of property on nights and weekends (you know, when the most intense things actually happen — see the box below), but smaller responsibilities require more scaffolding too.
A common example was managing program initiatives end-to-end. In the past, a student leader might have spotted a gap in the program — let's say, that there is no inter-residence debating competition — and created something to fill it. They would develop the idea, recruit others, pitch for funds, book venues, manage logistics, navigate risk and insurance (sometimes poorly), report on outcomes, and acquit the expenditure. Sure, the last one was never their strong suit, but you can get the idea. Many leaders observed that, today, it is a rare and exceptional student indeed who can carry a project like that end-to-end without significant staff support.
An interesting sub-theme here was a perceived fear of failure — particularly around running community events. This has always a gamble: some will be amazing, and some will flop. That's the nature of it. You can improve the odds but never guarantee a success. Learning to work live with uncertainty and recover from disappointments were powerful ways that student leaders were developed for life beyond university. But across the world, we heard about how student leaders have been taking failed events so personally that managers are removing the responsibility altogether, to protect their wellbeing.
Another corollary was the amount of support needed to absorb routine responsibilities. Many of the basics, like turning up for shifts, keeping records, following through on admin tasks, now require more supervision and reinforcement to embed than they once did.
So how are SHARE sector leaders responding? With more layers of support.
They have invested in more professional staff whose job is to coach, scaffold, and supervise student leaders. This has been necessary for institutions needing to sustain the outputs from student leadership roles.
Many pointed out that this is a sound investment because, yes, while professional staff costs are higher than before, the total costs are still far lower than that of burnout, attrition, reputational damage, and unfinished work that follow from disengaged student leaders.
[Universities] have invested in more professional staff whose job is to coach, scaffold, and supervise student leaders... the total costs are still far lower than that of burnout, attrition, reputational damage, and unfinished work that follow from disengaged student leaders.
Overall, the cost of helping students leaders is structurally higher than it used to be. The advice from experienced leaders was rather clear: accept it, work out how to optimise it in the 'new normal.'
Big Shift # 4: From Broad to Narrow
In the face of these pressures, universities have been redesigning student leadership roles, with a clear trend toward narrower, more tightly defined responsibilities, with clearer lines of accountability.
The 'design' of older instantiations of RA-style roles asked a lot from a single person — to be a mentor, mediator, leader, supportive listener, event planner, reactive maintenance scheduler, security guard, and crisis responder. Nobody came to the role with all these skills; and some had none. Hiring was on the basis of potential, and people were expected to climb a steep learning curve.
The 'design' of older instantiations of RA-style roles asked a lot from a single person — to be a mentor, mediator, leader, supportive listener, event planner, reactive maintenance scheduler, security guard, and crisis responder. Nobody came to the role with all these skills
Today, roles are being carved into smaller, more focused pieces. Each has more specific outputs, a clearer remit, and greater accountability.
The upsides are obvious. Students are more likely to be a skills fit and less likely to be overwhelmed by multiple steep learning curves. Supervisors can be sharper in their expectations and intervene with coaching or performance support earlier and more effectively.
The downsides are fewer, but one is that students now experience a narrower developmental arc with less opportunity to learn about areas new to them, less problem-solving across domains, and now forego the confidence one can build by mastering entirely new things.
The result is roles that are easier to supervise, but arguably offer a very thinly sliced experience of leadership.
Big Shift # 5: From Floors to Networks
For decades, RA-style roles have been almost synonymous with the concept of 'floors'. In many parts of the world, the first task of an RA was to build 'floor culture.' In simple terms, this meant breaking down an overall residential community into smaller physical zones of about 20-60 residents. [4] These zones have gone by many names — like wings, corridors, neighbourhoods, villages — but because most residences are multi-storey buildings, the term 'floors' became the default across the sector.
This system worked extremely well in the analogue world, but is struggling to hold up in a post-social media one. While floor culture remains an important goal, and knowing one's most immediate neighbours still matters, the need to fuel it through RA-style roles is increasingly under a shadow of doubt.
While floor culture remains an important goal, and knowing one's most immediate neighbours still matters, the need to fuel it through RA-style roles is increasingly under a shadow of doubt.
This is worth unpacking for a moment, because floor culture was never really about the placement of walls and corridors. Most students, past and present, want to find ‘their people’: peers with intersecting interests and the potential for lasting friendships. Statistically, those people are unlikely to be on the same floor. Therefore, in the analogue world, students had to start with the floor they were assigned to, get to know everyone, and become known for who they were, to build a network that might lead them to their people. RAs were invaluable in helping students take that first step.
Today, technology lets students skip that step. Social media and messaging platforms allow them to find friends and communicate with neighbours without engaging in RA-led activities. Increasingly, students can build networks based on shared interests rather than geography.
In response, more student leader roles are still designed to cultivate sub-communities, but now focus on interest-based ones — such as sustainability, gaming, food, fitness, music and so on — rather than physical zones. Leaders aim to connect residents from wider catchments, to make deeper matches, using digital tools to connect people and coordinate activities.
Overall, student leaders remain essential connectors, but operate in new ways, with new tools, that tend to overlook the 'floor' as the primary unit of community.
Big Shift # 6: From Authority to Partnership
In earlier eras, student leaders often wielded authority: enforcing rules, managing minor discipline, and sometimes recommending or administering warnings and punishments. Those days are ending.
The blurry lines between peer, friend, support provider, mentor, employee, and enforcer have never been easy to balance. For role-holders with limited life and work experience, and in the case of developmentally typical under-25-year-olds, their not-yet-mature prefrontal cortices, striking that balance is harder again. The consequences of mistakes can be very high, and altogether, it has proven too problematic.
Much of the reasons behind this shift intersects with the others described above, but the authority dimension deserves some focused attention. Even as roles have been narrowed into more specialised streams, you won't find a rule-enforcement stream. Authority and discipline now rest with staff.
Even as [RA-style] roles have been narrowed into more specialised streams, you won't find a rule-enforcement stream. Authority and discipline now rest with staff.
Student leaders today focus on building cohesion rather than imposing order. Even those involved in overnight shifts, where enforcing community standards is still required, now follow much more scripted responses, with clear escalation points to staff. This reduces the need for them to exercise discretionary judgment in administering authority.
Implications for leaders in the sector:
While the pace and breadth of change will vary across institutions, it is clear that these shifts highlight the general direction of travel, and together they represent a transformation, not a tweak.
They seem unlikely to reverse any time soon. There were no believable indicators that would suggest the student profile is going to suddenly shift back to something that resembles the past.
It's also essential to remember that these have quietly unfolded over time. Further shifts are not going to announce themselves with a "hello, this is the new standard." Your team will have to discern the shifts and devise a response.
Even if your university does not maintain a watching brief on student leadership through a committee taskforce or regular reviews, these changes are happening, and don't appear to be slowing. They are driven by forces beyond your institution. It is most likely they will force you to be more iterative with roles than in the past. To ignore them is probably to silently fall behind the curve
Promising Tactics for Today:
Even at this uncertain juncture, there is plenty you can do to adapt, based on what appears to be working across different contexts:
Seed the notion of leadership early. Help students see themselves in these roles and give them opportunities to build toward them, so they don’t self-assess themselves out.
Offer build-up and transition experiences, like shadowing existing leaders or taking on one-off projects that develop skills gradually.
Be clear on the benefits. Explain the short- and long-term value in taking on the role — and be explicit.
Make onboarding and training more intentional and evaluate it. Ideally with someone independent and dispassionate (see our Review Readiness resource for more).
Consider a broader training mix. Where possible, include professional development useful across a range of careers, not just role-specific skills.
Coach students through the role. Take a proactive stance to advising students on managing the demands of the role, rather than expecting them to figure everything out.
Establish a mid-year check-in process. For year-long roles, set up a mid-year review how students are coping and make individualised adjustments to keep them engaged. This is the time when their motivation can drop off significantly.
Put structure around the exit. As students finish their roles experiences that celebrate them, help them reflect on accomplishments and help them to translate their experience to the language of their target industry.
Perhaps most importantly of all: internalise the problem. Don't blame young people. If you want student leaders — and there's a lot of reasons you should — then you need to set the conditions that will get the greatest possible contributions from them. Waiting for a whole generation or the next one to change itself in favour of what you wish they were will leave you frustrated (and waiting a long time!). It's always better to own the issue and focus on the levers within your control.
Notes:
[1] These interviews were held in January-March 2025. We are still seeking direct insights from continental Europe, Canada, and the Middle East — or any other geographies with internationalised higher education institutions we haven't yet covered (if this is you, please contact us)
[2] The literature scan yielded limited insight. Most research examining RA-style roles focuses on single institutions and narrow themes — often exploring the beliefs, motivations, or reflections of resident assistants within a single institution. There is a notable absence of system-wide or cross-institutional studies that aggregate trends or examine structural shifts in these roles.
[3] Acknowledgement and sincere thanks to:
Laura Burge, who led several interviews involving painful time differences and played an essential role in the client project that started this study;
Jacob Waitere, the current President of the Asia Pacific Student Accommodation Association whose introductions made it significantly easier for us to reach two of the geographies mentioned.
Rebecca O'Hare, from the University of Leeds, whose introductions also accelerated and enriched the project.
[4] The exception is a national system where student leadership roles have historically been narrower and more limited in responsibility. In recent years, staff have become more ambitious for what student leaders can take on, but the historically low baseline means they are only now converging with the same levels seen elsewhere.
[5] The sizes of 'floors' varies more widely than this range; this range provided simply comes from the generalisation that most practitioners seem to think about 20 is ideal and start to feel uncomfortable when it exceeds 60.
