University students must work 20 hours a week to meet basic standard of living
University students in England must undertake more than 20 hours of paid work a week just to meet the basic standard of living, a report has suggested.
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The Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) think tank has called for maintenance support to be increased to allow for students to reach a "minimum socially acceptable standard of living".
A report from Hepi, TechnologyOne and the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) at Loughborough University estimated a student in England will need around £61,000 over the course of a three-year degree, or around £77,000 if studying in London, to reach a minimum socially acceptable standard of living – all excluding tuition fees.
For students in England, the maximum annual maintenance loan (up to £10,544), which is available only to people from low-income households, covers just half the costs faced by first-year students, the report said.
It also found that even with the highest levels of maintenance support, students in England must work more than 20 hours per week to meet a basic standard of living.
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Part-time work pressures are also "squeezing out" the other elements of a university experience such as studying, sports, societies and socialising.
The findings come amid a time students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland await their A-level and Level 3 BTec results on Thursday.
Last year, the Government announced that undergraduate tuition fees in England, which have been frozen at £9,250 since 2017, will rise to £9,535 for the 2025-26 academic year.
It also announced that maintenance loans will increase in line with inflation in the 2025-26 academic year to help students with their living costs.
Hepi has called for maintenance support to be "pegged to inflation" and for the household income thresholds to be increased so parents do not need to contribute to their child’s living costs until they have enough money to meet a basic standard of living for themselves.
"Maintenance support is currently woefully inadequate, leading students to live in substandard ways, to take on a dangerous number of hours of paid employment on top of their full-time studies or to take out commercial debts at high interest rates," Nick Hillman, director of Hepi, said.
"We hope our results will lead to deeper conversations about the insufficiency of the current maintenance support packages, how much the imputed parental contribution should be and whether it is unreasonable to expect most full-time students to have to find lots of paid work even during term time."
A spokesperson for Universities UK said: "Going to university is an investment in your future, and no-one should have their experience of higher education limited due to financial pressures.
"Universities already offer scholarships, bursaries and hardship support for students who are struggling, but this research shows that the maintenance package just doesn’t go far enough.
"This is why we are calling on the Government to increase maintenance support offered to students to better track inflation and living costs, so that everyone with the potential to succeed can do so, whatever their background."
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said the Government is "looking at all of the options" for how to support university students.