If the headlines are to be believed, no one should want to be a student in England any more. And yet this September and October, a record number of school leavers will begin their journey at university, unwilling to let rising costs, a regressive loan system and dimming graduate job prospects blot out the promise of the best years of their lives. The burden now placed on today’s students has grown so heavy, though, that it is reshaping people’s experience of higher education: new data from the university admissions service Ucas shows a marked rise in the number of students planning to live at home with their parents, rather than moving away to study.
It’s first worth stressing that this new arrangement is not, for the most part, a voluntary one. That’s clear in the gap between those “choosing” to stay at home and those who have no choice at all: among students from England’s poorest neighbourhoods, more than half now expect to live at home while studying, compared with just under a fifth from the least-deprived areas.
The student rental market is the main culprit – it is now forcing many teenagers to fork out more than £10,000 a year just for basic accommodation, even in cities outside London. Since the liberalisation of housing regulations in the 1980s (alongside an influx of wealthy international students), private landlords have been given free rein to jack up prices while housing standards worsen, with damp, rat-infested accommodation now becoming a normalised part of the student experience. A recent study by the National Union of Students found that an appalling 84% of students reported significant issues with their housing, with almost half living with mould, despite the extortionate costs many are now paying. It’s no surprise, then, that many of my peers feel they have no option but to stay at home.
This may seem like an easy solution, but it, too, comes with its personal costs. A lack of personal space as well as family conflict can mean worsening mental health for some students who stay at home. Many will also inevitably miss out on the life skills a person only learns when living independently. Then there’s also the very real risk of being excluded from the cultural and social highs of university life – the joys that make it worth persevering through gruelling deadlines and exam schedules. That trade-off is evident in those around me who have already made the reluctant retreat to study from home: all have struggled with isolation, and some have dropped out of university entirely. With graduate prospects collapsing, it’s the lifelong friendships built on campuses and in student accommodation that count more than ever in the university experience. Take that away and replace it with an hour-long commute from your childhood bedroom, and you begin to wonder if any part of getting a degree is really worth it.
Meanwhile, students on difficult terms with their parents are left in an impossible position, forced to cough up eye-watering sums simply to maintain a healthy distance from them. In this respect, particularly for those who have experienced restrictive upbringings, the freedom to explore adult life at university remains an invaluable part of discovering our real selves. Crippling costs therefore make what should be the most liberating chapter of our lives so far instead feel like trading one set of restrictions for another.
It has always been fashionable for older generations to bemoan the laziness of “today’s youth”. Yet how can anyone expect a generation to properly grow up while being denied the hallmarks of adult life? Stuck under a parent’s roof at university, and denied the economic mobility that comes with a graduate job once they leave, my generation is being condemned to live out its own twisted Peter Pan fairytale.
Luckily, it’s not all doom and despair. The recent Renters’ Rights Act has provided much needed breathing room for students, shifting the needle back in favour of tenants over Britain’s landlords for the first time in decades. Certainly, the ability to cut our tenancy short has been a gamechanger over the summer; previously, we had to keep paying rent for rooms we couldn’t stay in. But students will need more than just tweaks to their current arrangements; we need rent controls, a shift out of the private rental market, and investment into affordable, purpose-built complexes designed for university life.
There is one silver lining to all this: earlier this year the UK’s biggest student landlord warned that profits could slide because of lower room occupancy, which could be exacerbated as students choose to study from home, so the tower of cards is looking awfully close to coming crashing down. Perhaps if this model has finally run out of road, then students’ housing needs can finally be released from the grip of profiteers.
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