This article is part of a blog series published in partnership with Academics Stand Against Poverty UK, as they develop their third manifesto audit in the build up to the 2024 election. They will analyse the policies in the manifestos in relation to poverty to assess how confident they are that they will enable British society to flourish.
As the academic year for many draws to an end, many students across the UK will be breathing a sigh of relief, not simply because the summer represents a break from studying per se, but because a campus breather such as this offers respite from possibly the biggest challenge to being a student today – poverty.
As last week’s Higher Education Policy Institute survey revealed, more than half of full time students are working long hours to support themselves while at university.
For all of us who work in academia, there can be no doubt that student poverty in the UK has been of growing concern, particularly in recent years. Students over the last decade, and our current cohort of students in particular, have been hammered with policy decisions that have ultimately made them poorer. Today’s students are victims of failed social policies, mainly stemming from the Great Recession of 2008/09, but certainly, the policies which were to follow, notably the increase in tuition fees, Brexit, COVID-19 learning, Russia and Ukraine, and now a cost-of-living-crisis.
Starving to study
As a personal tutor and module leader to many students at my institution, I see and hear their struggles daily, and the last two years seem to have been the most difficult. A significant number of students in the UK are facing financial difficulties. In fact, recent evidence from the Russell Group (2023) has shown that one in four students regularly go without food and other essentials because they simply cannot afford them. More striking is that this figure increases to over three in ten for students from the most socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. The same Russell Group research also evidences that UK students are living on average just £2 per week above the destitution line, while over half (54 per cent) reported that their academic performance had suffered because of poverty and the cost of being a student. Sadly, 18 per cent had also considered dropping out due to financial reasons.
Clearly, our students are struggling. Unexpectedly high inflation, driven by factors such as the war in Ukraine and supply chain challenges, has also led to an increase in the cost of products at the tills. To help alleviate some of the struggles, more than a quarter of all UK higher education institutions and their Students’ Unions have resorted to opening campus-based food banks, or other low-cost/free food, as a way to reduce the financial burdens placed on students. In the 2022/23 academic year, the National Student Money Survey by Save the Student found that 18 per cent of surveyed students said they’d had to use a food bank, almost double the previous yearly figure, and with no real substantial increase in maintenance loans, students are finding life difficult.
This is bad for the student, obviously, but there is a serious impact felt throughout academia (and wider), one which should make all those interested in the mechanics of higher education sit up.
Because of the increased cost of living students are faced with, the actual role of being a student is under threat, which means that the sector is also in danger. Students are facing the burden of having to increase part-time (and in many cases full-time) employment hours just to cover basic costs. But let’s not forget, all students are not ‘traditional’ students either, and there are those with children and other caring responsibilities, homeowners, renters, mature, married, etc., and their costs may be substantially more.
A sector-wide problem
Evidence shows that almost half of undergraduate students have missed a lecture, seminar or workshop since the start of this academic year just to do paid work. The burden of living in poverty is the principal cause. However, other issues are also to blame, such as the pressure applied by employers’ use of zero-hour contracts compounding the problem. Students fear that by turning down a shift due to study commitments may result not just in the loss of earnings, but in the loss of their job. Consequently, it is not uncommon to encounter students who have multiple jobs within the gig economy, or flexing their online entrepreneurialism skills in some way. Yet evidence shows that a third are engaged in side-hustles on top of their studies, so at what point do we need to reflect on the pressure this places on our students?
All these have become common ways in which students recognise an ability to (maybe) avoid poverty. Sadly, however, evidence from Save the Student also found that some students (3 per cent) had resorted to some form of sex work to fund their studies. Of those who had done sex work, 9 per cent had reported sleeping with someone for money, whilst 15 per cent had created content on sites such as OnlyFans.
Unconditional basic income: A game-changer for student poverty
Recognising the issue, and to their credit, universities and their associated Student’s Unions have stepped in to help students. My own university and SU offered free food around campus, and others did likewise in response to the cost of living – including investing in hardship funding and other financial help. However, this has not been enough. Further government support is necessary to tackle the growing financial demands on students.
This is why I’m involved in leading a pledge to encourage the National Union of Students to support the idea of an Unconditional Basic Income for students. As current and ongoing pilots have shown, a UBI has the potential to end all forms of poverty. Just think how transformational this could be for our students.
They could be rewarded with a reliable source of income, allowing them to work less (or not at all) and to fully concentrate on being a student. This certainly would result in a reduction in poverty but, wider than that, it would also improve academia. As we know, generative AI has caused academics to rethink their assessments and, for the time-pressured student, burdened with paid work and low lecture attendance, having AI write your essay provides a certain ‘fix’. For me and the work I’m involved with, I see a UBI as an answer to this problem: just give students money, and they’ll attend more, study more and achieve more, and reduce the potential for falling into the trap of academic misconduct due to external pressures.
Dave Beck, Lecturer of Social Policy, University of Salford. Dave’s work principally follows two interconnected threads: food poverty and Universal Basic Income (UBI), addressing the sociopolitical influence of neoliberalism and how changing welfare policies impact people’s ability to provide food for themselves and their families.
Read all the articles in the Academics Stand Against Poverty blog series here.
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