Tackling student poverty is essential to challenging inequality

This came about in 2008 following a hard-fought campaign by NUS Scotland, and is rightly held up alongside free prescriptions and, most recently, free bus travel for under-22s as a shining example of the Scottish Government choosing a better, more progressive path than its Westminster counterpart.

The removal of the significant financial barrier of tuition fees has resulted in higher education being made accessible to thousands of students for whom university would otherwise have never been an option, opening up worlds of possibilities for people across Scotland.

Unfortunately, the reality is that merely offering free tuition without taking meaningful steps to eliminate student poverty means that the Scottish Government has only solved half of the problem. The ongoing cost of living crisis has made it clearer than ever before – tertiary education in Scotland is only available to those who can afford it.

NUS Scotland’s Broke report, published in early 2022, showed that a horrifying 12% of students have been homeless at some point in their studies, and the Thriving Learners reports published in 2022 by the Mental Health Foundation showed that nearly a quarter of university students and a third of college students have been eating less due to a lack of money.

These statistics are shocking, but they aren’t surprising. The financial support students receive from the Scottish Government in the form of bursaries and loans has long been trailing behind the real cost of living for students, and has increased by just 6% since 2017-18 – meanwhile the average rent for student accommodation has increased by 34%. This means that even for students receiving the maximum available student loan of £8100, after rent they would on average be left with less than £24 a week to survive.

Although the recent rent freeze is very welcome to prevent the cost of rent from increasing further, the nature of the freeze means that in many cases student rents have been frozen at prices that were already entirely unaffordable. I am also deeply concerned that the emergency legislation is due to expire in less than three months, risking exposing students to even greater poverty unless the legislation is extended until a comprehensive system of rent controls can be brought in.

Overall, this paints a bleak picture for Scotland’s students, but much of this data is from early 2022. Since then, inflation has risen to more than 10%, with people across the country experiencing the worst cost of living crisis of my lifetime. Despite the stark reality of this crisis, the recent Scottish Budget confirmed that there will be no increase in student support payments whatsoever for 2023-24.

This is a particular kick-in-the-teeth when considering the amount of wealth that is hoarded in Scotland’s education system. While students and staff struggle to survive on poverty pay, vice-chancellors take home huge six-figure salaries. Some universities hold billions of pounds in reserves.

The money isn’t what’s lacking – what’s lacking is the ambition to use the Scottish Government’s (admittedly limited, but not insignificant) tax-raising powers to the fullest and to redistribute the vast wealth being hoarded both within the education sector and elsewhere.

I think often when we talk about students there’s a misconception as to who Scotland’s students are. There’s a perception that students are fresh out of high school, flying the nest for the first time. That we can turn to the Bank of Mum and Dad when times get tough, that we will move back to the family home over the summer months. While this may be the experience of some students, for many others it couldn’t be further from reality.

The majority of students in Scotland are 21 or older, and many students have families of their own to look after as well as themselves.

Students from “widening access” backgrounds, such as those who are care-experienced, estranged, disabled, or have caring responsibilities face disproportionate levels of student poverty with a third of estranged students and 29% of care-experienced students having experienced homelessness during their studies.

The consequence of this cacophony of poverty is that students who don’t fit the stereotypical mould of middle class with parental safety nets simply won’t graduate.

The Broke report found that nearly a third of students in Scotland have considered leaving their course due to financial difficulty, increasing to over half of students who have caring responsibilities or who are care experienced themselves, and to a whopping 60% of estranged students. For those students who have stayed, a third have relied on commercial credit such as credit cards or payday loans just to keep afloat.

Over the past couple of decades it has become increasingly normalised that students will work part-time alongside their full-time studies, but this is not a sustainable solution. Some 43% of those students who work do so precariously through zero-hours contracts or the gig economy, and for any student who works alongside their studies, the more hours they work, the less time they can spend studying.

I know this first-hand. I worked at a supermarket alongside my full-time physics degree, and there were times where money was still extremely tight. I knew that if I wanted to pay my rent, I’d have to take on extra shifts – even if those shifts would sometimes coincide with classes. Faced with a choice of taking a shift and risking a bad grade, or going to class and risking homelessness, it’s a no-brainer.

In 2015, Nicola Sturgeon said that she wanted to be judged on her record on education. She was specifically referring to the poverty-related attainment gap in Scotland’s schools, but the reality is that students in universities and colleges face a similar class divide.

If she is serious about ensuring that everyone in Scotland can access education without being held back by their background, then we need to see urgent action on student poverty, otherwise the gap will only widen.