This piece was first published in The Guardian newspaper (30.06.20)
Covid-19 is causing young people to re-evaluate their educational choices. Though it seems that would-be UK university students are not being deterred as much as initially feared, it is likely that many will shun the traditional campus experience and opt to stay local. This means living at home and commuting to class instead of the bathroom and kitchen-sharing challenges – and the cost – of university accommodation.
The stay-at-home trend was accelerating even before Covid-19 struck, as young people increasingly began putting their friends, family and part-time jobs ahead of the promise of far-off adventures. Yet these students still fall beneath the radar. Some universities can even be sniffy about those who decline the ‘full’ campus experience.
Attempts to ‘involve’ stay-at-home students in campus activities are sometimes clumsy and misguided. Buddy schemes suppose that they yearn for companionship and inclusion, when many already have full social lives. Underlying assumptions can reflect an out-dated notion of the ‘ideal’ student: white, well-off, and hundreds of miles from home.
The proportion of stay-at-home undergraduates in the UK has risen to 21% from around 8% in the late 80s and early 90s. Newman University in Birmingham now classifies 93% of undergraduates as ‘commuter’ students. Such students are more likely to be from a lower-income household and to be the first in their family to attend university. British Pakistani and British Bangladeshi students are over six times more likely than their white peers to continue living with their parents or guardians.
Older generations of graduates, including university leaders, tend to assume that stay-at-home students are somehow missing out. They recall their own desperation to escape from their parents’ clutches, and grow wistful at having ‘found themselves’ during a life-defining undergraduate experience. But it’s not always acknowledged that the context was very different. In many cases, their fees were covered by the state. They were care-free because university was cost-free.
The stay-at-home option became more attractive at English universities as fees started rising. Young people are now particularly keen to avoid exorbitant rents, and universities tend to under-estimate how important paid employment can be to those feeling suffocated by educational debt. Recently, a freedom of information request found that only eight universities knew how many hours their students spend at work, and just two had any information about how this might affect their grades.
The relationship that elite universities have with their stay-at-home students often mirrors an uneasy rapport with ‘the community’ more generally – historically known as the town and gown divide. Despite claims to be civic institutions, not all universities readily share their facilities. Some open their doors for once-a-year special events, while closely guarding entry for the rest of the time. Others boast of research partnerships with local residents – while exploiting them as convenient sources of data.
It’s no coincidence that stay-at-home students are disproportionately BAME and working-class. Their sense is often that the higher education sector has been blind to issues of racism, and slow to address deep-rooted snobberies.
Regardless of where they’re living, drugs and partying are off the menu for lots of today’s students. Their identities are forged on-line, and they connect primarily through social media. Mental health is a priority. Many wouldn’t know where to find the Students’ Union bar.
If Covid-19 makes the stay-at-home option more appealing, this is something to celebrate, not regret. The local students that I teach are invariably an asset to their learning environments, bringing important alternative perspectives and enlivening academic discussions.
Crucially, stay-at-home students also take the university back to their own neighbourhoods, doing invisible but invaluable access work on their institution’s behalf. Informal chats with friends who aren’t students can demystify higher education. Stories are told. Social and cultural capital is shared. Perceptions are changed. Slowly, going to university becomes a more thinkable option for other young people within society’s most marginalised groups.
All universities may soon be forced to re-examine their provision for stay-at-home students – for financial reasons if nothing else. Applicants are no longer as geographically and socially mobile as the sector imagines. The number of mature students at English universities is beginning to recover following a drop that coincided with the 2012 fee increase. Many people have indicated that the pandemic has rekindled a long lost academic curiosity. The higher education sector – by accident rather than design – suddenly seems more available to those traditionally on its fringes.
Universities now need to focus on practical measures. Stay-at-home students don’t always have access to the working space and wifi that their peers in institutional accommodation take for granted. Employment or caring commitments may prevent some from engaging fully with group work, or socialising after hours.
In years to come, “stay-at-home” may become a redundant description. The preferred mode of engagement could be changing for all young people. Even middle-class students are beginning to choose economic and emotional security over a more immersive experience. Soon, universities may have to come up with a new label for the minority of students who insist on doing university the old-fashioned way.
A Higher Education Blog 