Students have plenty of hubris over finding the nubis

Congrats if you immediately clocked that “nubis” isn’t a real thing – I was too busy shaping hypothesis narratives to notice when I came across that stat on social media earlier.

It’s one of the questions posed in some student polling commissioned by Sophia Smith Galer, a senior news reporter for VICE World News who has pretty much pioneered using TikTok as both a newsgathering and news publishing platform over the past few years.

Her book, the paperback version of which is out tomorrow, is part-sex education, and part terrifying commentary on the abject failure of other forms of sex education (particularly during the pandemic) – and to illustrate, her Savanta January 2023 survey (weighted for gender, course year and institution type) paints a picture that helps justify the need both for the book and a wider agenda of change.

About a quarter of students ticked that their school left no gaps in their sex education – of the rest, 31 per cent said that their university helped fill in the gaps, while half said the university didn’t help.

Interestingly, students in the Russell Group were significantly more likely to say their schooling left gaps, and those in post-92s significantly less likely – which has echoes of that HEPI polling from 18 months ago that uncovered some remarkable differences by prior schooling.

Some of the findings on campus culture are fascinating. When asked about the extent students felt judged by peers regarding their sexual activity, almost 4 in 10 said they did – rising to half of Russell Group students but roughly a third in other universities.

Even if you take the increasingly problematic view that “students are adults” and this stuff is outside of universities’ role, as we inch towards OfS’ conversion of its “statement of expectations” into regulation, findings on support in the event of an incident matter.

Here 34 per cent of students are not confident in knowing what resources or people they can approach if they experience sexual harassment – which rises to 42 per cent for females, 48 per cent for asian students, and all round higher scores for those in LGBT+ categories. OfS’ forthcoming work on prevalence will really matter if it helps universities target where awareness and resources are needed most.

There are similar findings on the extent to which students think their university is taking sexual well being seriously – and strikingly on university efforts to tackle misogyny, while 26 per cent say too little is being done, 22 per cent say too much – rising to 32 per cent for students in the Russell Group.

It won’t surprise you to learn that the male/female split on “too much on misogyny” is 26 per cent / 17 per cent – but beyond gender, it’s a fascinating finding partly because of the range of hypotheses available – is it a reflection of differential levels of activity, differential attitudes or all bound up in other intersections of who gets to go where?

Back on that “we’re not their parents” thing, I have some sympathy with the idea that universities can’t make up for every previous failing in the school system – but I’d also caution against the idea that tick box online modules or packing Freshers Week full of this sort of stuff is the answer.

Increasingly it feels like we’re discovering that many of the things higher education participation is said to imbue disappear as soon as you make the experience less immersive, more stratified and, frankly, less “full time”.

Ultimately it’s leaders within students’ peer groups that address these sorts of social norming issues – but the more we feel we have to do for them rather than enable them to do for themselves, and the less time they spend with each other, the fewer students will be influenced by flailing and occasional projects, campaigns, posters and professionals.