Engaging Commuter Students
For many young people in the UK, moving away from home to go to university is something of a rite of passage. The belief that university involves moving away is so ingrained in our culture that only 20 per cent of full-time students in the UK live with their parents during the course, a far smaller proportion than the majority of countries in continental Europe. It’s easy, therefore, for those working in higher education institutions to assume that moving away from home is the default, and indeed the preferred option in order to get the most from university. Consequently, the need to adapt activity to meet the needs of such students may be overlooked.
One of the primary issues is time. For those who do not move away to go into higher education – including a further 16 per cent of (mainly mature) students who live in their own home – attending higher education may involve commuting in from some distance, reducing the time spent on campus and making engagement more difficult.
Students who commute are much more likely to be from poorer backgrounds and to define as BME than the general student population. There are a number of reasons for this: cultural attitudes play a part, as do financial considerations, whether the desire to reduce overall expenditure or to maintain a part-time employment opportunity. Many such students will have caring responsibilities, whether for children or for disabled adults. All of these create barriers to engaging either in learning beyond the classroom or in other activities such as clubs and societies or volunteering. In turn, this may reduce the sense of ‘belonging’ to the institution that is increasingly recognised as being a major factor in retention.
Of course, students do not have to commute to face time pressures, but factoring in living situations may be useful in planning certain activities. For example, if classes generally finish at 5pm, putting on employability workshops at 7.30pm might be too long a wait for a commuter student. Similarly, welcome week activity can often start from the position the student must have just moved out of home – modifying some messages to account for commuter students, rather than putting on completely separate events, would be an easy way to include them in these events.
Some institutions and SUs are working to better include their commuter students. Kingston University, for example, has been working to better involve commuter students in university life. Manchester SU has set up a student society for those living at home to help them buddy up on transport and to run specific events. Sheffield University also has a network of ‘local’ students with events and information.
As these interesting projects show, there is no one single way of addressing these students’ needs. It’s true that some commuter students will desire the ‘normative’ student experience, and will regret not being able to participate as fully as they would like and adjusting to their needs will help. Others will view higher education in more utilitarian terms; for them, attending classes to gain a qualification, often with a specific career in mind, will be the key driver and they will not be as interested in engaging beyond this. Consequently, the approaches will need to be flexible and must acknowledge that such students are not homogenous. Even so, universities and colleges don’t always do everything they can, and this needs to change.
David Malcolm
Assistant Director at the National Union of Students
NB: If you are interested in learning more about these students, NUS has published an extensive research report in 2015, Reaching Home. Building on this, we are currently working to develop further research into good practice for commuter students for publication later this year.
I am aware that Liz Thomas Associates has been commissioned to explore student engagement in the context of commuter students. Is there an interim report available? My own research is comparing the challenges of first-year students living at home to those living on university campus. It is ongoing, and I am interested for this reason. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Jo, great to hear about your interest in our research. We recently held a workshop to discus the initial findings and share some ideas on addressing the challenge of engaging commuter students. Following this we will be publishing the final report in a few weeks.