The changing habits of university students
Universities: get ready for the new normal, published on the LSE Higher Education Blog, is such an interesting article, specifically the part about the changing habits of undergraduate students. It details the fundamental shift in behaviour of modern students at university - with a trend towards working whilst studying and living in the parental home and commuting into the university. The knock on for this is a potential reduction in income for the university from halls of residence and campus facilities, alongside a drop in attendance from students as they try to juggle part-time work and a rigid timetable. The article goes on to suggest changes a university could make to mitigate these problems, but I was more interested in specific universities. A quick search on Google suggests that (aside from university student surveys) there is no specific data available for each individual university and the number of working students - the data available indicates a trend at a population level.
Purely anecdotally, I was at a big northern university at the weekend with my son for an offer holder open day, and when my son asked the student ambassadors in his chosen faculty about part-time work there was a general shrugging - they didn’t work and they didn’t know anyone else that had a part-time job. This seemed to be really useful information I thought. I think it would be interesting to know at application time whether a university structures its lectures around the assumption that their students have jobs, because if a student has no need or ability to work then that particular student environment might not suit them (and vice versa).
The same goes for commuter students. Wouldn’t it be useful information to know if the university you were going to attend had just a few commuter students, or they were in the majority? It wouldn’t be very appealing to a new student to be living on a ghost-town campus. But it could be a selling point if the halls of residence and the campus were lively and bustling. This information does seem to be more available, which is great. Just a few more things to consider when trying to get the best fit for an individual student. Take a look at the article for more details.
