Nearly half of students at UK universities feel lonely while half have never had any career guidance, leaving many “feeling underwhelmed by the university experience” as they struggle with living costs, according to a report warning how the “new realities of student life” could impact the sector.
The UPP Foundation’s Student Futures 2 report is based on a poll of more than 1,600 students carried out by Group GTI, as well as eight focus groups carried out with students at a range of UK universities, and eight interviews with institutional leaders.
The report looks at the student experience two years on from a manifesto published by the UPP Foundation’s Student Futures Commission, a response to the pandemic’s impact on the student experience.
While the report finds “plenty to be pleased about” in institutions’ post-pandemic responses, it also finds that 44 per cent of students responding to the survey said that they felt lonely at university; 44 per cent were less engaged with extracurricular activities than they were expecting to be, while a quarter (25 per cent) had never engaged at all; and 50 per cent of students had not had any specific conversations or guidance about future careers from their university.
