A third of UK students now planning to live at home

[born2bme]

Interesting stats here showing the cost of living impact on students:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70gy180e8lo

A third of new UK students now planning to live at home.
Nearly 10% of new Open University students are school leavers.
And "most" full time students reportedly working in term time.

@boys3 I’m very surprised at Buckingham! No one in south Bucks would get to Buckingham and many from East Bucks would not get to Oxford Brooks either. I doubt many from mid Bucks would consider Buckingham as it’s a private university with a 2 year degree. I have a strong suspicion these are not school leavers.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner Buckingham New isn’t the private one, sorry should have made that clear. The data covers all UK domiciled undergrads, so will include mature students. Plus some 90% of undergrads from Bucks do go to a uni other than those two! 😁

@boys3Yes, it’s Bucks New in High Wycombe - that makes more sense. It’s the former college of HE and low tarrif. I would expect very high % to RG and RG plus from here. The only easy access RG is Oxford and maybe UCL if you travel into Euston. Otherwise it’s leaving home and the majority do. Coaches into Oxford are quite good along the M40 corridor but not from the East of the county.

University of Buckingham, the private one, is the 55th destination of choice for undergrads from Bucks, sandwiched between Hertfordshire and Winchester unis.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner adding to the top 20 from Bucks posted earlier, 21 through to 40,

• Sheffield
• Liverpool
• Surrey
• UCL - the first proper London one
• Newcastle
• KCL
• York
• Leicester
• Bath Spa
• Brunel
• QMUL
• Oxford
• Sussex
• Canterbury ChristChurch
• Swansea
• UWE
• Brightion
• Manchester Met
• City
• Plymouth

Just outside the Top 40

42 Edinburgh
43 Imperial
48 Lancaster

surprisingly a bit further down, though a smaller uni in home undergrad terms of course

67 LSE

then

88 Glasgow
90 St A
91 Queen’s Belfast

The only unis in England with nul points are Bradford and Lincoln Bishop (Bishop Grot in old money).

@boys3 Yes, I think they give a local discount (bribe!)

DH is from Glasgow and almost everyone he knew stayed at home (late 80s/early 90s) some of them got a flat in the second year and then they all moved home again. When you have a choice of several universities it’s an easy choice. Everyone we know there now there kids are mostly staying at home.
Our local uni doesn’t do what DD is going to do and she wouldn’t go there anyway. Everywhere else is just too far.

@Lemonorzo They don’t pay fees though do they, so obviously staying in Scotland is hugely popular.

My local council area is so small that I could probably work out who was who if they published that!

Doing a degree is absolutely not a solo activity in STEM - labs and projects are always group work. You are working with the same people 8-10 hours a day (the workloads are phenomenal, in engineering in particular - our labs were open until midnight) and it led to lifelong friendships, in addition to networking opportunities that have hugely helped my career.

Fair enough, but you get what I am saying no?

@SadiraOfTyr And I’d also add I don’t think those degrees are suitable for a commuting student. DH did engineering and they are busy degrees.

Lots of kids in Scotland stay at home for uni.
They want to void having any debt at all. AI tells me (so it could be bollocks) that half of Scottish students have no debt. About 80% of the Scottish population lives in the central belt and as said above, Glasgow has always had a tradition of living at home - Glasgow-based universities seem to very much be the first choice of the DCs of those I know who live there.

Sort of related FT article listing average Plan 2 loan balance plus number of students with a Plan 2 balance for every university.

https://www.ft.com/content/48539819-9e46-4a98-9ef6-5db5255379c0?syn-25a6b1a6=1

Ignoring more niche focused institutions at the general uni level biggest average balances at

St A. £65,281, 4414 students

Imperial £63,075, 10040 students

Edinburgh £62,067, 14462 students

Royal Holloway £58,642, 21393 students

@PollysKenwood Well no fees is a great push for this decision isn’t it? What about poorer rural dc? They presumably have debt so as usual, they are the ones who need to get a loan.

Plus we know some courses in Scotland are not taking many Scottish students as the fees are better from others. I heard law at Edinburgh was a big problem for Scottish students wanting places. There’s pros and cons for every political decision.

I grew up in a rural area so I understand the access issue (also wanted to get away from dysfunctional family). There is a sort of outreach campus of a uni there now but that would have been useless for me, I’d still have had to leave and it is actually one of the reasons I decided to live where I do, so if the DCs wanted to keep the debt down then they’d have some decent local options to consider (not an option for me, my DF couldn’t exactly move his farm). Quite a few of my DCs friends want to stay at home, they say they like the city and they like getting fed.

Staying at home is very common in much of Europe though and with the costs, I’m not surprised it’s more common here now for those who are able to access it.

Law at Edinburgh university is a big problem (and probably law at Glasgow too) although I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been able to access a course they are happy with elsewhere. Glasgow has always had this pattern though, even back when student maintenance grants were a thing, all the people I know who went to Glasgow uni back then were from Glasgow and stayed at home.

When there were few kids going to uni, I assume many of them stayed at home during their initial years of work so are there actually more 19 year olds living in their parental home than there were in (say) 1990?

@PollysKenwood I guess Scottish students wanted Scottish law. That’s maybe why there is an issue.

It’s ok if your job is taking you to a city, my DH founded a business with a colleague who already had dc at school. It’s just not possible to make a free choice about where you live. When you are not near a decent uni (well our next nearest is Oxford!) you just cannot leave and rock up in Bristol if your clients are surrounding London. DH did not particularly want to stay where he did his degree and worked in London for a bit before relocating to where we are now. Everything is fine here - just no decent uni!

There are lots of other places to study Scottish law. To name one, Strathclyde has a very good law department and is in the central belt and there doesn’t seem to be an issue with places there. There are others. Edinburgh and Glasgow university aren’t the only places to study Scottish law.

i think staying at home will become more common for those for whom it can work for. Obviously that’s not going to work for everyone,
it wouldn’t have worked for me. I grew up 100
miles from a city with three buses a week to the nearest massive municipal centre, a town of 2000 people.

Where I live now there are good universities close by and the intent to stay at home seems to be most common across my DC’s friends who come from lower income families or parents are originally from elsewhere in Europe.

Nonsense. I commute to my healthcare degree 80 mins each way. It’s fine, no diff to a work commute.

@SewYellowLikeButter How much of that do you do in labs in the evenings? It’s not the same as engineering! Young people should not be commuting 80 mins to university. They are not at work.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-64247475

Thus was the Edinburgh law outcry. Only Scottish contextual students were given a place one year. So if you were in Edinburgh and Scottish and wanted to stay living at home realistically you’d be looking at a significant commute.

Glasgow is a huge law course. It’s run as Scots law and common law. Other than constitutional it’s run as two completely separate courses. The common law side is English, Commonwealth, American, NI students and a handful of Scottish. Scots law is entirely Scottish students. It’s LNAT so competitive to get a place but there are definitely some ordinary none contextual Scottish students including an Edinburgh based contingent who live in Glasgow not at home.

I wonder if it will eventually affect the rankings of universities? I mean, going away to a high ranking Uni now generally means an expensive city... More and more the ones who can afford it are the well off or well subsidised (no problem there, they've done incredibly well against difficult circumstances - but the proportion of financially qualifying students is small).

For those in the middle the return on investment is getting more and more illogical.

If overseas student numbers are dropping and an ever decreasing segment of home students can afford it - it sort of gets to the stage that employers know the local Uni has some very smart cookies, so the high ranking Uni degrees just become less and less important - just is just a brand to say you can afford it.

(I say this as someone with DC who have picked expensive Uni Cities, far away from home 😳)

@NamechangeRugby Not sure that helps anyone much. Often local employers look at grads from a local uni because they apply for jobs. There will still be competition with dc who have been to higher ranking universities because they might well apply too and have done a better course. DH tended to find this. Even if dc had good A levels but went local, they didn’t do the depth. He felt they had not pushed themselves and wanted an easy ride. Obviously if you are unemployed the loan makes no odds but doing a poor course doesn’t help much.

Plus why is it that living in Durham or Bath gives you are great leg up but living in Stoke on Trent doesn’t? Post code lottery? Big winners and losers I think. I don’t think Staffs will overtake Bath any time soon.

Plus, take a look at the courses at the unis at the foot of the table. Do you see MFLs? A good History department? A vet school? A variety of high class Engineering degrees? Whst about job prospects? LSE economics grads earn substantially more than Wolverhampton grads in the same subject. Should the very bright not go to LSE and choose Wolverhampton? Lifetime earnings will be way better at the former. If a student doesn’t care, they don’t, and I accept that but the LSE grad will still be much better off fairly quickly.