The Cost-of-Living Crisis is Here to Stay – What Can We Do Long-Term to Support our Students?

Like the rest of the sector, here at the University of Greenwich we have grappled with the cost-of-living crisis over the last year, reflecting on the most effective and meaningful interventions to best support our students. Being an institution based in both London and Kent, spread across three campuses with a high proportion of commuting students and international students, has meant that our students have faced a variety of challenges. In collaboration with our Students’ Union (GSU), we developed several initiatives to support our students which we discuss in this article as well as reflecting on what lies ahead and how we can make this support sustainable in the long-term.

Research

GSU conducted a survey of 1,722 students during October 2022 to explore the effects of the cost-of-living crisis on different groups of Greenwich students. The full research is available here. 

The aggregate dataset demonstrates that a large proportion of Greenwich students are struggling with financial circumstances, with almost 50% having less than £50 income available after essential expenses are paid at the end of the month.  

GSU members are significantly worse off than the national average in terms of expendable income, with almost double the percentage of students with less than £50 expendable income per month.  

International students, students with declared disabilities, students with caring responsibilities, those from low-income backgrounds, and those commuting from more than an hour away from their primary campus are likely to be worse off across the board.  

Employability is listed as a key future concern for all students, but for international students more so than their home counterparts.  

Based on best practice at different institutions, local discussions and suggestions from students, GSU provided a series of recommendations aimed at tackling issues in the areas of cost reduction, employment and employability, and reducing hidden costs.  

In addition to this research, we spoke to 2,438 students in Term 1, 2022 through our Retention Calling Project. The Retention project, now in its third year, focuses on meeting students where they are at, to provide a proactive, early intervention to resolve issues they might be facing during their studies. The project is delivered by GSU in partnership with the university employing over 20 student staff to make calls all year round. During these calls, students are asked about their programme, extracurricular experience, loneliness, any pressures they are facing, and are offered advice and directly referred to the relevant University and Students’ Union services where required. 25% of those students called were concerned about supporting themselves financially or paying their fees. Of those, 48% identified pressures that were impacting their studies. These include the cost-of-living crisis (48%), commuting and travel costs (29%) and work commitments (22%).

Cost of Living Support in 2022/23

In response to the research and student feedback, we implemented a number of initiatives over the last academic year:

Food vouchers and community meals

Students were clear that their primary concern was buying essential groceries, so we initially implemented an Open Pantry on all three campuses in term 1 last year. The pantry was run jointly by the University and GSU, but we soon realised that the logistics to manage demand across three sites whilst ensuring those most in need had access to food was too difficult to manage. We therefore changed our provision to food vouchers from January with the support of Blackhawk Network. This enabled us to buy food vouchers at cost that students could simply redeem online at all main groceries stores while being limited to essential items and groceries only. We set up a simple online form for students to request a £20 emergency food voucher with a short section to tell us why the voucher was needed. Students were able to request one voucher per week and could submit multiple requests during each term. From January until July, we issued 15,700 food vouchers to our students. 

Just before Christmas we also launched free Community Meals – breakfasts twice a week as well as dinners twice a week across our three sites delivered by the SU and university catering teams. Students had to book their free ticket in advance to manage demand; we were able to provide 450 free meals on a weekly basis during term time.

Transport

Being a multi-campus university, transport costs were on the forefront of our students’ minds, so we implemented a voucher scheme to support travel between our Kent and London campuses. Like the food voucher scheme, we set up a short online form for students to tell us why they needed help with transport costs. From January until July, we supported 2,700 students with inter-campus travel.

Sanitary products

Ending period poverty has been a key issue long before the cost-of-living crisis but it became ever more apparent that we needed to address it. In collaboration with GSU in response to their Officer priority campaign, we piloted providing free sanitary products in buildings with high footfall across all sites. The purchase and restocking were initially managed by the SU and student staff, but we soon acknowledged that we needed a more sustainable solution to meet demand. For the new academic year, we have now installed dispensers in toilets and the service will be provided through Sodexo.

Other initiatives

The above is not an exhaustive list – our Library removed library fines for overdue books, we added financial hardship to our accepted reasons for extenuating circumstances and the Employability Team reviewed how we can provide more paid opportunities to our students. You can find more information on our Cost of Living Hub here.

Lessons Learned and Looking Ahead

All of the above initiatives were new for us last year, we had to experiment, adjust or change some of the initiatives to ensure they were meaningful for students. The key for us was to listen to student feedback, not make assumptions and be responsive – what is it that they need most and how do they want to access it. The change from Open Pantry to food vouchers over the Christmas break is an example of that – students told us they welcomed and needed the offer of free essential groceries but that the pantries weren’t accessible enough and stock was not meeting demand so we switched to a more efficient scheme providing students with the freedom to purchase food in line with their dietary needs. 

Student feedback on all the schemes also highlighted that students appreciated the unbureaucratic nature of these and the swift support received as we would normally process voucher requests within the same week.  

None of these interventions would have been possible without the strong partnership between the university and Students’ Union from providing the research and insights to co-delivering the schemes ensuring that we are responsive to students’ needs. 

As we look ahead to this year, we have been reflecting on how to make this support sustainable given that the cost-of-living crisis is here to stay for now. 

We have been fortunate to secure funding to continue the Community Meals at the same scale as last year and expand our provision of free sanitary products. We will also continue to provide food vouchers, albeit at a smaller scale, streamlined through our Hardship Fund. 

In addition to this, we have been working on embedding information about money management and part-time job opportunities during pre-arrival information and have added specific student groups to our guaranteed interview scheme for Student Ambassadors. And, finally, we are working closely with our Alumni team to raise more funds through crowdfunding and donations for these vital schemes. 

We know that the challenges our students face can only be partially met with the schemes we provide but we hope they are an important step in making them feel supported, part of our Greenwich community and able to continue with their studies.

Tania Struetzel, Head of Student Engagement and Success 

Colum Mackey, GSU Head of Advocacy and Policy