Students Are at Breaking Point: The cost of living crisis is forcing students to choose between paying rent and buying food. They need targeted support – and an end to a for-profit university system that treats them as cash cows.
Students Are at Breaking Point: The cost of living crisis is forcing students to choose between paying rent and buying food. They need targeted support – and an end to a for-profit university system that treats them as cash cows.
29 comments
I’m lucky enough to be able to go into accommodation again although the rent is crazy, bills are included. Yet for my friends in student houses the costs are simply ridiculous and that’s not even mentioning that many of them have issues with the houses, with mould issues and structural problems. Is it too much to ask to live somewhere affordable and safe?
I have to keep repeating, despite it feeling like screaming into the void, I don’t think people quite grasp how completely and utterly fucked the Tories have allowed our HE sector to become. I don’t see it recovering to the heights it once occupied with pretty massive reform of the whole system again.
Just to give the other end of this “for profit” system – The 2010/11 reforms changed HE funding from a more direct state subsidy to farming students for their tuition fees. Great. Some free market logic there I suppose. Except of course the fees were capped at £9,000, which even in 2011 was not enough to cover the cost of running many STEM courses. Fast forwards over 10 years, the fees have been capped at £9,250 for nearly *seven years* now. If they had just kept up with inflation we would be charging in excess of £12,000 per student, so effectively we have had quite a significant real-terms funding cut snuck in through the back door that no one has noticed or wants to acknowledge.
Combine with all the completely fucking perverse incentives this “for profit” system has created, that has completely decimated academic capacities to do anything more than exam-factory an increasingly disconnected and fed-up bunch of undergraduates. Couple with the low pay, the horrendously insecure working contracts, the *insane* hours we are just expected to put in as a matter of course, its hardly a fucking wonder the whole system is on its knees.
Tories won’t care about students as they are students and unlikely to vote Blue.
Doesn’t everyone see this is where we are at with this government? If you don’t vote for them then they genuinely truly do not give a shit about you.
Just remember not to forget this if you do well with your degree and well in the world of work when you’re on your six figure income… Because thats when they will woo you on the understanding they have your vote.
The dominoes have started falling, the unions are speaking up, and now all they have to do is anger the public.
The government thinks saying the unions are at fault will only get them more hate. And once the public can’t get to work because of the strikes all hell will break loose in London.
Are we meant to care about students now?
When I was a student at uni around 2016/2017 I had to count up coins to afford Tesco 20p shower gel, and that was then. I can’t imagine now.
I’m a student at uni.
I’ve been privately renting the entire time.
I did a foundation year first and just finished my first year on the degree.
I am dependant on the student loans to live and study, my uni workload is so much that it’s not possible to have a part time job.
I rent a room, there’s another 3 people in the house, and our energy bills are included in the rent price. I pay £320 pcm at the moment. Our energy bills are all under fixed contracts until September, we’ve been told that our rent will have to go up then. My food bill is 30% more expensive and because I live in a hilly city it’s not easy to go to an Aldi especially after covid has wrecked me.
Welcome to Britain.
Remeber when we fenced students into their dorms and got all surprised pikachu face when they expressed their dissatisfaction with being treated like literal cattle?
“an end to a for-profit university system that treats them as cash cows.”
Haha good luck with that!
They won’t care. The ones profiting will just say maybe they shouldn’t have gone to uni if they couldn’t afford it and to “live within their means” whom as millionaires who have inherited their wealth surely understand.
Impending “Well Labour introduced university fees!” if Boris Johnson is criticised for this, hoping nobody looks beyond the soundbite to realise his government is in a position to do something about it, but just doesn’t give a shit.
Students should be given free student housing its one thing if you are local and have your own place or still live at home but if you come from abroad or out of town you should be given the choice of free student housing.
Hell make it a working accommodation and if they choose free housing they agree to help clean up so the janitors ain’t rushing around.
I thought it was hard when I went to uni in the 90s when I had to get a Student Loan to help me live (it was only around £1100 a year). But it was the lap of luxury compared to now.
I have no idea how my kids are going to cope at uni in three years time. We’re treading water as it is, we can’t afford to pay their way through.
I was lucky enough to get into university the year before the cost went upto 9k
Back then Maintenance grants helped a lot. Since then everything is a loan and universities give smaller bursaries then they used to.
In total my bursary and grant combined gave me £4200 a year, which was more than tuition fee loans at 3k. And Maintenance loans were an additional bonus 3.5k
I feel sorry for the future of education whilst we still have tories in power
I was looking at going back to Uni after I lost job during COVID.
Absolutely could not have afforded it, looked at multiple options and also looked just after the year started in October.
Because it was so expensive I decided to look around instead.
Signed up to a scam college and got strapped with a £5000 debt I can’t get rid off.
Don’t even look at “the training room” – absolutely con artists
the same age and not a student isnt fun either. all decent priced housing is student only because landlords are too cheap to deal with extra council tax
Join the que guys
I’m my third year, I was working a full time job on top of full time uni, basically working myself to death because my maintenance loan just didn’t suffice for private rent.
Couldn’t go part time because my position shifted to full time over the pandemic, and the pay was good, but I fizzled out so hard I had no desire to pursue my degree job afterwards.
On the flip side, my friends always got max loans that were hoovered up by student landlords and they were broke for 3 years.
Pick your poison.
Postdoc researcher here, I completely concur. The brain drain is huge. Students are pissed off because their teaching is considerably worse than it was 10 years ago. Class sizes are ballooning, at least at my university, but they’re hitting the limit of the number of people the department can actually accommodate. PhD students are mercilessly exploited (effectively they are paid close to minimum wage for doing very difficult work). Postdocs are not much better, the pay is fine but there is a huge churn factor because everyone works on 2-year contracts that are tied to quite tenuous research funding. There was a big churn at my previous post in late 2021 as the entire Welsh supercomputing scene was thrown into chaos, a huge chunk of it was EU funded and it literally disappeared overnight. Staff are constantly on strike because of cuts to academic pensions, so students miss yet more teaching and staff can’t get their work done, even though they are working to fixed deadlines. It’s not quite as bad as healthcare and education, but it will be in a few years time. Education is a human right, it should be free. Furthermore, cuts to HE are going to cost a lot more in the long term than they save now, they are causing permanent damage to our previously world-class university system and the brain drain into industry and to other countries is only going to continue.
It will never change whilst the tories and co are in any kind of power, they profit too much off the suffering of everyone else.
As far as they’re concerned the system is working perfectly.
Postdoc researcher here, I completely concur. The brain drain is huge. Students are pissed off because their teaching is considerably worse than it was 10 years ago. Class sizes are ballooning, at least at my university, but they’re hitting the limit of the number of people the department can actually accommodate. PhD students are mercilessly exploited (effectively they are paid close to minimum wage for doing very difficult work). Postdocs are not much better, the pay is fine but there is a huge churn factor because everyone works on 2-year contracts that are tied to quite tenuous research funding. There was a big churn at my previous post in late 2021 as the entire Welsh supercomputing scene was thrown into chaos, a huge chunk of it was EU funded and it literally disappeared overnight. Staff are constantly on strike because of cuts to academic pensions, so students miss yet more teaching and staff can’t get their work done, even though they are working to fixed deadlines. It’s not quite as bad as healthcare and education, but it will be in a few years time. Education is a human right, it should be free. Furthermore, cuts to HE are going to cost a lot more in the long term than they save now, they are causing permanent damage to our previously world-class university system and the brain drain into industry and to other countries is only going to continue.
my uni legit had to open a food bank because students can’t afford to eat, I’m lucky that I haven’t been forced to use it yet but that’s only because I have fried rice for every meal
Student loans applied for this time last year did not take into account the levels of inflation and the energy crisis. Students have literally been left up shit creek in a leaking boat and are still waiting to receive an application form for a paddle..
As a master’s student I got £11,500 as a loan for the year. However £6,800 of that goes to tuition, thankfully I got a 25% alumni discount otherwise it would’ve been £8,500. I share a 1 bed flat with my partner so thankfully our rent is relatively cheap at £337.50 a month each, but this for 12 months is £4,050.
So after tuition and rent I have about £650 left to cover bills, transport and food for the entire year. So I’ve been working during my master’s to cover the other costs and so I can actually have some sort of social life or occasional treat. But with the amount I need to work I’m definitely not focusing enough on my course.
And after 2 years of online teaching with no reduction in tuition and every petition being responded with “you’re still getting the same quality of teaching” even though I’m in microbiology and practical lab sessions are an incredibly important part of any microbiology course, there is no way in hell I am voting for the Tories who only care about diverting blame and giving money to their mates.
I went to Uni in 2011 and it was hard back then even with generous parents regularly sending me money. I even had a sweet bursary as well due to home income being low
I barely did anything nice or wasted money and still struggled. Must be hellish now
Seems very odd to think a ll can increase rent *mid contract*. I thought it was only after a new contract or by a small amount.
Fuck em get a proper job, university is for the rich and toffs alone. This way we will be secure in the knowledge that only the Rich,the Entitled, and Conservatives run the England forever. Even to think that a Secondary School pupil could be a senior politician should be a hanging offence.
Predatory accommodation letting to students has literally massively lifted the price of rent for everyone across cities. Every new building you see go up or being renovated you don’t need to wait for the sign you know it’s student accommodation. It’s a massive bubble built upon extracting the maximum amount from people that receive very little money.