Close
Search
Menu Menu
[gtranslate]

UK students being forced to work 20 hour weeks to make ends meet

Credit: Unsplash
By
Brighton, UK
0 comments
0 comments

A new report shows first-years need £260 a week (excluding rent) for a ‘socially acceptable’ standard of living – forcing many to take on jobs that leave little room for the studies they came for.

The news that UK students are being forced to work 20 hours a week just to meet a basic standard of living will come as no surprise to anyone who has been a student, particularly anyone who recently graduated – and especially those who graduated from a London-based university.

Only last week I was chatting to a colleague about the dire state of living in London on minimum wage, and we both shuddered at the thought of being a student during the current cost of living crisis. ‘How on earth did we do it?’ we both asked. Neither had an answer – but I know a lot of tinned tuna and Lambrini was involved.

That’s not to say that my time at university wasn’t enjoyable and world-defining as everyone makes out. I have reams of great memories and the squalor in which we all lived only added to the experience in many respects. But this normalization of the struggling student lifestyle is pretty problematic – especially given the fact that the conditions in which young academics are being forced to live are only getting worse.

So seeing this quantified in a new Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) report hits differently. The numbers finally put hard edges on something that’s long been felt in the stomach.

According to the HEPI findings, first-year students are hit the hardest. Alongside rent, there’s the unavoidable one-off ‘setting-up’ costs (like buying a laptop and kitchen supplies). Then there are the ‘settling-in’ costs: nights out during Freshers’ Week, coffees with coursemates, joining societies. It’s not just frivolity; it’s the groundwork of adult life, networking before you even know you’re networking. These aren’t optional extras, they’re part of what it means to fully participate in university.

It’s the latter that feeds a festering stereotype of students as lazy hedonists who live off the bank of mum and dad. Those people certainly exist, don’t get me wrong, but for most of us it couldn’t be further from reality.

The report estimates that first-years need at least £260 a week (excluding rent) to reach a ‘minimum socially acceptable standard of living.’ Over a three-year degree, that comes to £61,000 in living costs – and that’s before you factor in location.

A London student’s ‘minimum’ is a very different beast from one in, say, Hull. Even the highest available maintenance loan, which is reserved for those from low-income backgrounds, barely covers half of that total. The gap needs to be made up somehow.

For many, ‘somehow’ means work. A lot of work. The HEPI report says students are taking on 20+ hours a week of paid employment on top of their full-time studies. It’s a schedule that leaves precious little time for reading lists, let alone the seminar debates and extracurriculars that make a degree something more than a piece of paper.

‘Maintenance support is woefully inadequate, leading students to live in substandard ways, to take on a dangerous number of hours of paid employment on top of their full-time studies or to take out commercial debts at high interest rates,’ said Nick Hillman, the director of The Higher Education Policy Institute – the organisation which published the report.

For those at institutions like Oxford or Cambridge, where part-time work is actively discouraged,  the situation borders on a paradox. You’re told not to work so you can focus on your studies, but given no realistic financial route to survive without doing so.

This irony is that politicians and employers have long stressed the ‘soft skills’ students gain from university life. Things like teamwork, networking, leadership, cultural capital. These rarely come from sitting in the library alone. They come from joining societies, organising events, building projects with peers – the kinds of things that vanish from your timetable when your week is sliced up by part-time employment.

Working while studying is not inherently bad. For some, it’s a way to gain experience, build a CV, and earn independence. But the balance matters. At 20 hours a week, a ‘side hustle’ starts to take over the very reason you’re working said job in the first place.

Some might dismiss this as a lesson in ‘real life,’ but it’s worth asking whether that’s the purpose of higher education, or whether it’s a sign we’ve stopped valuing the idea of studying as a full-time pursuit at all.

Senior Remote Writer Brighton, UK

I’m Flo, (She/Her) a Senior Remote Writer at Thred. I recently completed a Masters in Visual Anthropology, and seek to interrogate the ways digital spaces can amplify marginalised voices in the arts and cultural sectors. Follow me on LinkedIn or ping me some feedback via email.

Popular

Keep up with thred by signing up to our planet-positive newsletter!

More from thred.

Financial abuse has been declared a ‘national emergency’ in the UK
Credit: Adobe
People

Financial abuse has been declared a ‘national emergency’ in the UK

A new report reveals millions of mums and children face quietly pervasive economic coercion – with family budgets being used as tools for domestic abuse.  Abuse isn’t always obvious – least not when it takes place in the domestic sphere. But new figures from the charity Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) show that financial coercion is quietly affecting a staggering number of women and children. It’s a form of violence that remains underreported...

By Brighton, UK
Women are bearing the fertility burden with invasive treatments
Credit: Pexels
People

Women are bearing the fertility burden with invasive treatments

Lack of research and misdiagnosis is forcing couples, disproportionately women, into gruelling fertility treatment.  When a couple struggles to conceive, you would expect both partners to be treated equally during the process of diagnosis. But fertility care still leans heavily toward invasive focus on the woman and little attention on the man. Not only does this imbalance place the onus of fertility struggles onto women, who then face an isolating sense...

By Brighton, UK
How did Gen Z influence Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in NYC?
Credit: Huete.at
People

How did Gen Z influence Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in NYC?

On November 4, 2025, 34-year-old Zohran Mamdani was elected as the first Muslim mayor in New York City. And this is largely due to the influence of Gen Z.  After four long years of subpar mayoral leadership, New Yorkers, especially Gen Z,  are ready for a change. As of November 4, 2025,  Zohran Mamdani is the change New York so desperately needed. The significance of the 34-year-old's mayoral win extends beyond...

By New York City, US
The UN warns that women face rising online abuse 
Credit: Pexels
People

The UN warns that women face rising online abuse 

On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, UN Women reveal a disturbing rise in violent abuse toward women in digital spaces – with little consequence for perpetrators.  A few years ago, someone described the internet to me as ‘the world’s biggest public square,’ which sounded charming until I remembered that public squares throughout history have also hosted witch trials, duels, riots, and the occasional beheading. The past year...

By Brighton, UK
Accessibility