For many, college is a springboard into the workforce, and college students use their academic qualifications as a way of getting their foot in the door after graduation. The classroom, therefore, can be very competitive, especially among particularly driven individuals. This atmosphere of competition can raise tensions and provide the spark for interpersonal conflict, both between students and between students and professors, who are charged with evaluating student performance.
Diversity benefits education at all levels, but it can also promote tension between students. New college students may be living and studying in a diverse environment for the first time in their lives and may be unfamiliar with the dynamics of multiculturalism. Differences in ethnic, religious, racial, or cultural background can amplify conflict or cause misunderstanding.
Many college students face significant pressure, including from non-academic sources. Anxieties related to social life, dating, living away from home, and anxiety about post-college life can heighten the stress of students' lives. In the classroom setting, such high-tension situations become volatile. For example, a minor disagreement between two well-adjusted students could turn out to be a full-blown conflict between students under a great deal of non-academic emotional stress.
The university system thrives on civil, rational discourse as a means of arriving at truth. However, academic discourse can also spiral out of control when participants abandon their civility or get emotionally charged in the course of debate. Conflict arriving from academic discourse can involve students and faculty alike. Students who vociferously disagree with a professor's stance, or vice versa, may inadvertently spark verbal conflict in the course of expressing their own opinions.