The cost-of-living crisis and sky-high rents mean students feel there ¡°is much less room for enjoyment¡± and are organising their university life around ¡°saving and earning¡±.

Financial pressures leave students increasingly viewing higher education in transactional terms, with the focus on securing graduate employment, the UPP Foundation concluded after investigating the present-day student experience via focus groups.

¡°While all students see the social and personal development that university offers as a fulfilling but costly side of the student experience, they see the ¡®point¡¯ of university as getting the skills and qualifications they need to get on the job ladder ¨C the value of a degree is more instrumental than intrinsic,¡± a report says.

Researchers spoke to 31 students from the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University, and note that the cost of a ¡°university lifestyle¡± is pushing students to diverge from the ¡°typical¡± university experience, with a growing number commuting and prioritising paid work over their studies.

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The report?cites Ucas data which shows a rise in the number of university applicants choosing to live at home in the first half of the current decade, reaching 30 per cent of UK 18-year-olds applying in 2024.

However it warns that: ¡°If we position an undergraduate degree and student life as pursuits that students undertake in order to invest in their future outcomes, particularly graduate employment, then students spending more time on earning money and commuting to save money can be framed as a direct transfer of future income into present cash flow in order to make ends meet.

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¡°Paradoxically, however, the more intensely students approach university in these transactional terms, the less time they will have to engage in the student experience activities that could lead to better outcomes.¡±

Most students interviewed described how part-time work was important for funding their living costs, with all students noting that the maintenance loan is ¡°insufficient to support the residential student experience¡±.

Many commuter students did ¡°not initially intend¡± to commute, but most said that they valued the skills and qualities it provided them ¨C including self-discipline, motivation and organisation ¨C and few said that they would change the arrangement they now have.

Richard Brabner, executive chair of the UPP Foundation, said that both commuter and residential students are ¡°cost-conscious young adults making savvy and often difficult decisions about how to make university affordable¡±.?

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¡°If we want to help them use it to develop into well-rounded individuals as well ¨C and the students we spoke to told us that we should ¨C we need to give them ways to make the student experience more affordable and their study more enriching.¡±

The paper says this can only be achieved by expanding the curriculum to ensure that it provides more of the social and personal development opportunities that students find ¡°fulfilling¡±, such as through service learning, civic engagement or collaborative, in-person endeavours.

Cost pressures also need to be reduced by expanding maintenance grant funding, uplifting loan entitlement thresholds or ¡°stepping in to reduce the cost of certain goods, such as student accommodation¡±.

But the interviews found students are increasingly viewing rising living costs as their own responsibility.

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¡°The students we spoke to said that they felt that it was them (rather than the university, the government, the OfS or any other body) who took responsibility for ensuring that they could afford to study and socialise,¡± it says.

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com