Higher education institutions implement purposeful change to improve their performance or impose changes in response to their external environments. To deal with these changes, students are expected to develop their coping capacity – the emotional and cognitive ability to manage the demands of adverse situations. Student coping is composed of four interdependent core elements – self-efficacy, engagement, resilience and anxiety. This article synthesizes the evidence on the effect of higher education changes on student's ability to cope. Using Polanin et al.’s (2017) overview process, our search generated 551 articles, and after three rounds of screening, the remaining 12 reviews were analyzed using the narrative descriptive synthesis approach. We found that the quality assessment within the included reviews were inconsistent and, sometimes not clearly defined. From the analysis of the reviews, four key themes emerged: (1) change is complex; (2) the nature of change is varied; (3) there is an interdependent relationship between the coping elements; and (4) the measurement of change is not sophisticated. Our findings highlight the need for higher education institutions to adopt a principle-based approach to purposefully develop students' coping capacity, by improving their self-efficacy, engagement, and resilience, and reducing anxiety. Limitations and future research directions are outlined.

高等教育机构实施有目的的变革以提高绩效或强加变革以应对外部环境。为了应对这些变化，学生需要培养他们的应对能力——应对不利情况的情绪和认知能力。学生应对由四个相互依存的核心要素组成——自我效能感、参与度、适应力和焦虑度。本文综合了有关高等教育变化对学生应对能力影响的证据。使用 Polanin 等人 (2017) 的概述过程，我们的搜索生成了 551 篇文章，经过三轮筛选后，使用叙述描述性综合方法分析了剩余的 12 篇评论。我们发现所包含评论中的质量评估不一致，并且，有时没有明确定义。从审查的分析中，出现了四个关键主题：（1）变化是复杂的；(2)变化的性质不同；(3) 应对要素之间存在相互依存关系；(4) 变化的衡量不成熟。我们的研究结果强调，高等教育机构需要采用基于原则的方法，通过提高学生的自我效能感、参与度和适应力，并减少焦虑，有目的地培养学生的应对能力。概述了局限性和未来的研究方向。我们的研究结果强调，高等教育机构需要采用基于原则的方法，通过提高学生的自我效能感、参与度和适应力，并减少焦虑，有目的地培养学生的应对能力。概述了局限性和未来的研究方向。我们的研究结果强调，高等教育机构需要采用基于原则的方法，通过提高学生的自我效能感、参与度和适应力，并减少焦虑，有目的地培养学生的应对能力。概述了局限性和未来的研究方向。