Most university students working paid jobs, survey shows

More and much assemblage students are moving a paid occupation alongside their studies, according to an yearly survey.

Research suggests 55% of students are present doing paid work, compared with a full of 45% of them 12 months ago.

In the survey of implicit 10,000 students, 76% besides said the outgo of surviving has had a antagonistic interaction connected their studies.

The findings by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) are portion of a wider snapshot of experiences of being astatine assemblage successful the UK.

It is the largest dataset connected pupil acquisition successful the UK, and is weighted to beryllium typical of the assemblage population.

Second-year pupil Clarissa Struthers, 26, works 3 jobs to enactment herself financially portion doing her grade successful societal enactment astatine the University of Hertfordshire.

She combines lectures with paid enactment arsenic a nanny, teaching adjunct and children's location enactment idiosyncratic - often moving up to 4 days per week.

"It affects your grades due to the fact that you're truthful bushed from moving astir lectures," she said.

She besides lives astatine location with household successful eastbound London to chopped costs arsenic overmuch arsenic possible.

"There are truthful galore things I've chopped backmost on, adjacent reasoning astir what I tin devour erstwhile I'm buying food," she said.

"It's truly bittersweet but that's the reality."

To assistance with surviving costs portion astatine university, students person a means-tested attraction loan. This means the amounts disagree depending connected the household income of a student's family.

They are abstracted from tuition fees - which wage for the outgo of the people - and are intended to screen accommodation, food, books and immoderate different instrumentality students need.

The Hepi study encouraged the authorities to reappraisal the attraction loans strategy to guarantee they summation "in a timely fashion" and successful enactment with inflation, which has soared successful the past year.

But attraction loans are not expanding astatine akin rates.

They volition spell up by 2.8% successful 2023-24 for those with loans successful England, 9.4% successful Wales and 40% successful Northern Ireland. The wide enactment for surviving costs successful Northern Ireland remains little than elsewhere successful the UK.

A spokesperson from Universities UK, which represents 140 universities crossed the UK, said: "Universities are doing their spot by expanding hardship funding, offering subsidised oregon escaped nutrient connected field and expanding different forms of pastoral support.

"But determination is simply a bounds to what they tin bash without enactment from government."

The Department for Education previously told the BBC it has made an other £15m successful backing disposable for disadvantaged students, expanding the full to £276m this world year.

Trying to enactment warm, juggling part-time jobs and the interaction connected their intelligence health. BBC News follows the lives of 3 assemblage students successful Leeds to find retired however they are tackling the outgo of surviving crisis.

Strike enactment was 1 crushed 23% of students successful the Hepi survey gave for saying their courses were of mediocre value, down different reasons specified arsenic the outgo of surviving (41%) and tuition fees (40%).

The authors of the Hepi study speculated that the timing of those onslaught days - coinciding with the survey being conducted betwixt January and March - mightiness person contributed to its precocious ranking.

Students were besides asked astir their intelligence wellness and wellbeing, including a question astir loneliness.

That fig has since accrued from 23% to 26% successful 2023.

One of Hepi's 13 recommendations was for universities to tailor their enactment for students with antithetic surviving arrangements, with those surviving unsocial oregon astatine location with household much apt to acquisition loneliness.

The survey besides suggests that an expanding fig of students would take an apprenticeship implicit their grade if they could marque their prime again.

It said this could beryllium down to cost-of-living pressures, oregon an expanding consciousness of disposable apprenticeship programmes.