Students should be afforded the opportunity to study away from home but support needs to be targeted - Bill Carmichael

There’s a joke among university teachers that the students seem to get younger every year, when the truth is the new cohorts are always the same age, and it is us that inexorably get older.

One of the delights of working in a university is this fresh influx of young people every year. Some of them, barely 18, will be know-it-alls trying to hide their anxiety, while others will be so shy and terrified they will hardly utter a word.

It is hugely satisfying to see these teenagers grow in confidence and gain knowledge and understanding of how the world works, until by the time they graduate they are accomplished and talented individuals that are in great demand in newsrooms across the globe.

It always gives me a thrill to see the name of a former student on the top of a story in the national or regional press, and occasionally one of them will contact me to say a piece of advice I pressed into their reluctant ears many years ago turned out to be useful.

An essential part of this process of growing up is learning to live independently of mum and dad for the first time.

This involves dealing with new social situations, organising your own work, making friends, making mistakes and dealing with rejection and occasional loneliness.

On top of all that are the practical things such as shopping, cooking, cleaning and dealing with your laundry.

All of this - the academic studies and simply dealing with life - contributes to the development of a rounded individual ready to take on the world.

So new research published this week by University College London (UCL), is a cause for concern.

It shows that one in five students awaiting A-level results plans to live at home while studying at university, prompting concerns that cost pressures are limiting young people's educational choices.

Researchers tracked the lives of 11,523 students in Year 13 who took A-level exams this summer.

A fifth (20 per cent) of them said they would live at home during term time if they got into their preferred university, and 18 percent of these said the main reason was they could not afford to live away from home.

Students from families using food banks were more likely to plan on living at home than other students, and less likely to to study at elite Russell Group universities, the analysis suggests.

Jake Anders, associate professor and deputy director of the UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, said: “It is concerning that young people, more likely to be from less well-off backgrounds, are curbing their educational choices because of worries about the cost.

“For some planning on going to university, living at home will be the right choice for them, for a whole host of reasons. But it should be exactly that - a choice - not something they feel they must do because of the financial challenges of living away from home during term time.”

The researchers have called on the government to reintroduce maintenance grants for disadvantaged young people who want to study at university.

There is a case to be made for this, but any support needs to be carefully targeted.

And here is the rub - what the educational establishment is reluctant to recognise, and all the inclusion and diversity programmes fail to address, is actually where the real educational disadvantage lies.

A Parliamentary report in 2021 found that 72.8 per cent of ethnic Chinese pupils eligible for free school meals went onto higher education, compared to 59 per cent from a black African background and 31.8 per cent for those of black Caribbean heritage.

The figure for white working class pupils was 16 percent, and for boys even lower, just 12.7 percent.

So, white working class boys are the most educationally disadvantaged in society, closely followed by white working class girls. If we are offering help to young people to overcome poverty and reach their full potential, let's put it where it is most needed.