Wednesday 14-05-2025 - 11:25

 

 

In recent months, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Students launched a commission on students in higher education, to contribute to the government's Higher Education Review and contribute to the public conversation on student maintenance.

 

The National Union of Students subsequently called upon students’ unions across the country to submit evidence. I submitted evidence on behalf of Lancaster.
   
One piece of evidence referenced research LUSU undertook in 2023, highlighting stark statistics around the staggering number of students that must undertake part-time work to help fund their studies, the hours in which they worked, and the extent to which students feel this work has impacted their ability to study effectively.
   
Other pieces of evidence submitted were less quantitative, and included written accounts from my experiences serving students over the past two years and having countless conversations on a plethora of topics. I spoke of the reasons why prospective students are altering their choices of institutions due to the cost-of-living crisis for example. As another example, I explained how institutions should be balancing the delivery of high-quality teaching, workloads, and student experience. Below are my responses.
   
How can institutions balance delivering high quality teaching efficiently, workloads and student experience?
   
Efficiency is the key here. At Lancaster currently, some students can be timetabled into 0900-1900 days, with disparate gaps in-between. This leaves very little time for students to work outside of the weekend. Further, with students both studying and then working for longer amounts of time, their scope of being involved in sports clubs and societies that can really make a student experience is limited.
 
Institutions must find ways to condense their timetables, following the trend set by institutions like De Montfort University, the University of Law, Coventry University, and Anglia Ruskin University etc. These institutions have condensed their timetable and operate in working weeks that are less than five days.
   
This gives students so much more scope to work and fund their studies, which is often crucial to a student’s opportunity of attending university. Further, this also gives students time to delve into extra-curricular activities – of which can have massive positive impacts on mental wellbeing.
   
Do you see students altering their choices of institution due to the cost of living?
   
Though we have not conducted research on this, I can speak of my lived experience and my countless conversations with a plethora of students.
   
The simple answer is yes. I have heard many times that students opted to attend Lancaster University, my institution, for the economic appeal of a smaller, Northern city. Similarly ranking universities like that of Bath, Warwick, Exeter, or Loughborough as some examples were seen as too expensive to comfortably live at.
   
I have also heard several times that students have chosen universities closer to home because of the cost of living and the subsequent appeal of commuting. Some students commute from the get-go, whereas others live on campus in their first year with the intention of commuting in later years after building a group of friends. Or, for those that don’t commute, some students may choose to attend an institution close to their home so they can hold down a pre-existing job that will help fund their studies.