What This Means
This research suggests that university students who belong to marginalized groups in Germany face discrimination that is complex, layered, and deeply harmful to their mental and physical health. Rather than experiencing one type of discrimination at a time, students described overlapping forms — such as racism combined with sexism, or language-based exclusion combined with classism — that intensified their experiences and made it difficult to address any single source of harm. These experiences were especially pronounced in relationships with professors and instructors, where power imbalances left students with few options for recourse.
This research also suggests that discrimination does not just affect how students feel in the moment — it becomes embedded in their bodies over time, manifesting as exhaustion, burnout, fear, anger, and a disrupted sense of identity and belonging. Students described these effects as persistent, not fleeting, pointing to the cumulative toll of navigating discriminatory environments throughout their academic lives. At the same time, students were not simply passive victims; they found ways to endure, withdraw, or actively resist discrimination, though these survival strategies themselves required significant emotional and physical effort.
The study highlights that discrimination in universities should be understood not just as a social or ethical problem, but as a public health issue with real consequences for student wellbeing and academic success. The authors argue that meaningful change requires universities to go beyond symbolic statements about diversity and inclusion, and instead take concrete institutional responsibility for addressing the structural and cultural conditions that allow discrimination to persist.