Disabled students are almost twice as likely to have considered quitting

The increasing difficulty that students are having fitting in everything that they’ve been led to believe they should be getting from the student experience is clearly causing compromises.

But one aspect I was surprised to find silence on in the main report was any reflection on differentials for disabled students – not least because it may be that addressing the access issues required by law would appear to be a way to unlock progress on a range of other issues in the report.

The first thing you notice if you dive into the cross tabs is that there’s a 17 percentage point gap on considered withdrawing – 39 per cent of disabled students versus 22 per cent of nondisabled students.

Even if completion gaps are small, that miserable time thing is then feeding through into the regret scores – 59 per cent of nondisabled students would make the same choice of course and university again, versus 51 per cent of disabled students.

It also hits VFM perceptions. 35 per cent of nondisabled students are positive or very positive on that front, while only 26 per cent of their disabled peers say the same thing.

Given those “students at work” headlines and the realities surrounding being able to find work and undertake it for some disabled students, the financial factors are pretty stark.

Disabled students are roughly 5pp more likely have a bank loan or overdraft, 5pp less likely to be depending on family and friends for money and 10pp more likely to be in receipt of a maintenance loan or grant.

As a result, cost of living challenges have had a notable impact on 83 per cent of disabled students, and just 74 per cent of nondisabled students.

Then there’s mental health – on the four key questions, disabled students are twice as likely to have a low score on life satisfaction, more than twice as likely to score low on life worthwhile, there’s a 12pp gap on low happiness, and on high anxiety it’s 32 per cent of nondisabled students versus 50 per cent of disabled students.

You can imagine causation in both directions with loneliness – 56 per cent of nondisabled students are lonely all the time, most of the time or at least once a week. That’s 75 per cent for disabled students.

All of the teaching and learning questions are worse for disabled students, and while 40 per cent of disabled students have applied for an extension, only 25 per cent of nondisabled students have.

As I’ve said before on here, the aggregate impact of “extra time” being the chart topping reasonable adjustment is significant – students are not time travellers, and extra time isn’t universities’ to give.

And not only are disabled students actually working longer hours in part-time work, there’s even a free speech differential – 66 per cent of nondisabled students are comfortable expressing views even if others agree, down to just 60 per cent of disabled students.

SAES doesn’t get into disability type, but the other interesting stat is the volume. 37 per cent of students declare disabled here – up six percentage points in a year, and up 24pp since 2017.

What’s going on there? Some people seem to think that the increases are about more students declaring and/or getting a diagnosis than previously, rather than more disability per se. But if that were the case, we’d be seeing those experience differentials narrowing – and we’re not.

Some would say that if you accept that disabled students are going to have a crap time, then more of them in the sample are bound to be dragging down the overall scores. But that kind of defeatism is your classic “points over there” stuff – yes it’s true that there’s not lots universities can do about the cost of living crisis, but some of the biggest differences are over areas where universities have legal duties to adjust.

Some would say that it’s access, completion and graduate outcomes that really matter – and providers do seem to have been making progress on a) and b), with less progress on c). But a good experience in HE isn’t only about its contribution to outcomes – it’s important in and of itself.

Much, I suspect, of the differential is about what we would call microaggressions when we look at race equality issues – the compound build up of all the little failures to adjust for disability, coupled with social attitudes and some intersectional socio-economics.

But what that should cause the sector to do is grip what it can control. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the idea that in most universities, a plan is developed to enable a students’ access, and the only stats on whether that plan has been executed are whether a formal complaint has come in is pretty hopeless.

The continued treatment of access feedback as any other piece of student feedback – rather than a red flag for a compliance threat – is partly a failure on both regulators and how higher education does “student voice”. The use of legal risk evaluation and NDAs on complaints when they do come in prize limiting liability over real learning.

Dated assumptions that excellence is related to learning pace rather than reaching a standard when you’re ready aren’t helping either, and nor are the endless tales of competence standards being mixed up with assessment methods because “it won’t be like that in the real world”.

But at 37 per cent, it’s above all a failure to deliver the anticipatory duty. Service providers, local authorities, universities, museums – anyone opening their doors to the public – is required to proactively seek out and remove barriers that would otherwise put disabled users at a substantial disadvantage. They can’t politely wait until a wheelchair user, a deaf visitor, or a student with chronic fatigue points out the problem – the law requires them to look ahead, plan ahead, and act ahead.

In England, if OfS was doing its job, there’d be dedicated access questions in the NSS, and the mere existence of that anticipatory duty should require substantial material in all APPs regardless of whether there are metrics gaps in outcomes. Instead we get an advisory panel that hasn’t published a peep since its launch in January 2024. What are higher education providers right now, today, more worried about? Free speech, or these figures. We know, don’t we.

All while DfE seems to be chipping away at the support offered through DSA, problems persist in SLC delivery of aspects of what’s left, and while the government defends its welfare reforms – which will hit many thousands of disabled students – on the basis that their reforms will help people into work, they can’t even tell us how many students the changes will affect, because the DWP thinks it’s DfE’s problem, and vice versa.

Thank god for Disabled Students UK – plugging away at highlighting all of this partly through its flagship Access Insights Survey. The 2025 iteration is on now – do distribute if you can.