Written by Emily Dixon, Senior Research and Content Officer, London Higher.
London Higher always waits with interest for the HEPI/AdvanceHE Student Academic Experience Survey. In our report on the 2022 data, we looked at student satisfaction. The following year, we looked closely at student perceptions of value for money and work and employment. In HEPI and AdvanceHE’s 2024 report, they described an evening out of contact hours and workload, and general student satisfaction with their number of teaching and study hours. The cost of living crisis, however, continued to be a significant issue, and students all across the UK have been increasing the number of hours they work at paid jobs to support themselves. Full time students are working more and more hours at paid jobs outside their subject of study. The implications of this for all student groups, across all subjects, in all areas, are worth considering in detail.
In London, the UK’s largest and most expensive city, commute times are long even for students living in university-owned accommodation. Looking back on the data from 2024 and thinking ahead to 2025, we can consider the London part of this story. We know London’s students are diverse in many ways and, as demonstrated by a recent AccessHE report, becoming more diverse all the time. The question of how higher costs of living are impacting London students will have many answers rather than one answer, because London student experiences are so varied. This blog will consider some of those many answers.
So how were London students feeling in 2024?
When we first looked at the 2022 Student Academic Experience Survey dataset to see what the London story was, we saw high wellbeing and satisfaction with their lives among London students and this seems to still be the case. Out of all the areas in England, London was the joint most likely to rate their lives as highly meaningful in 2024 (19% of London undergraduates rated this at a 9 or 10 out of 10). London students were less likely to report high anxiety levels than all students nationally (33% of London students rated their recent anxiety as 6-10/10 compared to 38% of all students) and more likely to say their overall level of life satisfaction was high (16% of London students rated their life satisfaction 9-10/10, compared to 13% of all students).
100% of London students included in the 2024 survey data reported being both impacted by and concerned about the rising cost of living and what it meant for their studies. However, the experiences of London students are not uniform. While all Londoners reported some level of negative impact from cost of living concern on their studies, only 24% reported this being a large impact (compared to 30% of all students). London students’ uneven spread of answers to this question tells us how wide the range of experiences within the city are.
If we look at some of the demographic groups of students disproportionately found in the capital, we can see the beginnings of some of these varied stories. 54% of Black British students reported cost of living concern having a high level of negative impact on their studies (the most of any UK ethnic group). International students from outside the EU, however, were some of the least likely students to see a large negative impact from cost of living concerns.
The situation for London students and paid work to support their studies is interesting. Similarly to what we found last year, London learners were some of the most likely of any UK region to have a paid job unrelated to their course of study during term time. 65% of London undergraduates have a paid job during term, the highest of all English regions and joint with Northern Ireland to be top in the UK. Despite being highly likely to have a job, though, London students work fewer hours per week than their peers. The number of hours worked by a London student during term time is 13.95, lower than the national average of 14.54. Some potential factors affecting this may be London’s large body of students from global majority ethnic backgrounds, who work fewer hours per week than white students, and lower number of mature students, who work some of the highest hours of any student group.
It is generally agreed that students can work up to around fifteen hours a week without negative impact on their studies and wellbeing. There are some reasons to be concerned that the numbers of paid work hours for some student groups are climbing above this level. While the average number of hours worked for London is under this cutoff, there will be many students in the capital working many more hours and it is important that their experiences do not vanish from sight due to rounding.
London’s higher education institutions are working hard to support their students through the expensive world of the 2020s. London Higher’s Mental Health and Wellbeing network recently launched a University Mental Health Charter Working Group to offer a unique space for London universities to create a fertile ground for local exchange, sharing best practice across institutions and navigating common challenges by building innovative solutions together. Using datasets like the Student Academic Experience Survey, we can understand what is more important to students and how their situations and concerns are affecting their day-to-day life. Looking ahead to this year’s data, London institutions should continue to bear in mind the many experiences being lived out in this highly diverse city. Institutions should take this data as a starting point to look more deeply at the groups of students in their own communities, and start to unpick some of the many stories we have seen the beginnings of here.
