Almost 20,000 students have withdrawn from undergraduate courses in the UK so far this academic year, figures show.
As the cost-of-living crisis continues to bite, student finance website Save the Student warned that many more dropouts could follow if the government does not increase maintenance loans.
Data from the Student Loans Company (SLC) shows that 18,280 undergraduate students withdrew from their courses between the start of the 2022-23 academic year and 21 February. Of those withdrawals, 16,463 were for England-domiciled students.
This is down by 1 per cent from the number who had dropped out by a similar point last year, but it is well up on every other year since such figures began to be collected in 2018-19. As a proportion of total student numbers, however, the SLC figures show that 1.2 per cent of all undergraduates receiving student finance quit their courses – up slightly from 2021-22, and the highest on record.
