Dropout fears as students face cost-of-living increases

Evening Standard 29 December 2022

A university leader has warned that dropout rates could rise as under-pressure students struggle amid the cost-of-living crisis, writes Aine Fox for Evening Standard.

It would be a “tragedy” if young people felt they had to quit their higher education courses because they are worried about being able to make ends meet and trying to balance study with work, Universities UK (UUK) Chief Executive Vivienne Stern said. Many are taking on extra hours in part-time jobs to support their studies, and it is an issue affecting more students from different backgrounds than seen before, she added.

In an interview with the PA news agency, she said: “I think it’s probably a broader section of the kind of student population than we would have been previously particularly concerned about, because students who previously would have been able to ask their parents to sort of top up their loan or help them out when they ran out of money towards the end of term, we’re finding, I think, that perhaps parents can’t do that because they’ve got their own financial pressures and then accommodation costs are going up very fast.”
Full report on the Evening Standard site.

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