Academic stress remains a major concern for college students in China in the post-COVID-19 context. This study examined the effectiveness of an eight-week Social Emotional Learning (SEL) intervention in reducing academic stress and enhancing selected social-emotional competencies among first-year students in a Chinese higher education institution. A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design was employed. Participants were 196 first-year students assigned to an experimental group (n = 98) and a control group (n = 98) in a quasi-experimental study. Quantitative data were collected through validated pre- and post-intervention measures of academic stress, self-esteem, emotional intelligence, and problem-solving skills, complemented by semi-structured interviews with a purposive subsample of intervention participants. Results indicated that students receiving the SEL intervention demonstrated significantly reduced academic stress and significant improvements in social-emotional competencies compared with the control group (p < 0.001). Qualitative findings further revealed that SEL intervention enhanced emotion regulation, reconstructed self-worth beyond academic performance, strengthened problem-solving confidence, and culturally embedded peer support contributed to these outcomes, so higher education should integrate social emotional learning into student development programs. Overall, the findings support the effectiveness and cultural relevance of SEL interventions in Chinese higher education and highlight their value for student development and curriculum design.
Wang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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