Research by The Sutton Trust
Research covering student opportunities doesn’t happen often, which is why we were so excited to see The Sutton Trust release The University of Life and Covid-19 and the University Experience in February. Not one but two pieces of research to get stuck into.
Wonkhe did a wonderful job analysing both here, so check that out if you want a detailed review. In this blog I thought it would be useful to pick out the findings that are most relevant to student opportunities people.
The University of Life piece focuses on employability and essential life skills developed at university. The Sutton Trust focuses on social mobility, so naturally their research differentiates between students from different socio-economic backgrounds. The report also breaks data down by university type (Russell Group, Pre-1992 and Post-1992).
They review activities outside of the classroom. They break this down into:
Work placements and internships
Extra-curricular activities at university
Paid employment
Studying abroad
Employability activities by universities
‘Extra-curricular activities’ covers clubs, societies, fundraising, student media. They group all of what we call ‘student opportunities’ under ‘student societies’ throughout the research. So overall within the report there isn’t a clear distinction between different types of opportunity, however in some places they do break this down.
For example, in Figure 6 (p.22) there’s a diagram showing types of student societies graduates took part in, with ‘A sports or fitness society’ coming out on top with 30%. This data is then analysed by socio-economic background, and between types of universities.
The highlights for opportunities people are that:
Students’ skill development comes from many places - not just their course.
Students from poorer backgrounds are less likely to get involved with student opportunities.
Students view ‘student societies’ as more valuable for developing leadership skills than their course, work experience, study abroad or paid work.
There’s a really useful summary of barriers to participation (p.38), showing that 43% of students who didn’t take part in any ‘student societies’ didn’t because “there were no societies/activities which interested me” - interesting for us to consider going forwards.
Financial barriers to participation are still a problem in ‘student societies’ but not just because the activities are too expensive - students needing to work in term time means they can’t (or don’t feel they can) participate.
If students don’t feel welcome they are less likely to participate - there’s more work to do in making opportunities inclusive spaces.
The second piece, Covid-19 and the University Experience, is shorter, and is an accompanying piece to the University of Life piece as the latter was written pre-Covid.
This focuses specifically how student participation changed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The report compares participation data from 2019 with 2020 data and in some cases has January 2021 data. Similarly to the University of Life research, it doesn’t break down opportunities into sports, societies, volunteering, fundraising and student media, but does have some differentiation between ‘sports societies’ and ‘student societies not including sports’.
The highlights for opportunities people are that:
39% of students reported taking part in student societies or sport in the Autumn term and in early 2021 this is down to 30%.
Student participation in societies or sport was down 18% in Autumn 2020 compared to Autumn 2019.
The participation gap has widened during the pandemic.
The biggest barrier to participation was being put off by the lack of social interaction during online activities.
Students are concerned about gaining skills and experience needed for employment.
Both reports are well worth a read, particularly when considering how we re-build opportunities post-pandemic - how can we take the learnings from this research to open up opportunities for more students?
