When the Office for Students included commuter students in the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register (EORR), it recognised the risk that commuter students may not always get the same experience as their “traditional” residential peers.
The second wave of access and participation plans (APPs) for 2025–26 to 2028–29 have slowly been published and in the wake of the EORR’s inclusion of commuter students, we’ve got a better sense of the steps providers are taking to make the experience more equitable.
Taking Universities UK’s member list as the sample and searching variations of the phrase “commuting student” in the currently available wave two APPs, 44 out of 81 APPs (at the time of writing) referred to commuter students in some form.
Sometimes this was a simple statement of demographics, for example, “over 86 per cent are commuters,” or a statement of intention – “increase… work with commuting and mature students.” Other plans detailed comprehensive work to reduce inequities with various interventions, projects and additional research to undertake.
Some plans referred to commuters broadly in a literature review but did not link this to their local contexts, and as such were not included in our analysis.
Definitions
As part of our ongoing series about commuter students, convened with Susan Kenyon at Canterbury Christ Church University, one challenge when discussing support for commuters is working out if everyone is talking about the same thing.
The EORR sets out that commuter students referred to students “based on the distance or time [students] take to travel from their accommodation to their place of study” – but it then goes on to note there are many definitions, referencing both time and distance and the fact of not having re-located for university.
In the absence of a sector-wide definition, providers have had to work this out themselves.
The majority of plans that referenced a definition identified commuters as students whose home address matches their term time address, who had been recruited locally or still lived in their family home. Some plans used a distance to identify commuters, for example 15+ miles into their main campus base. When using distance as a criteria it opens up the possibility of a commuting student also being a student who has relocated to university but lives further away due to cost and housing pressures.
As we’ve seen earlier in the series, there are differences in the experience based on those who chose to commute versus those who do so out of necessity.
St Mary’s University in Twickenham explored using the Office of the National Statistics’ Travel to Work Areas maps to define commuters and setting an average travel time of 15 minutes or more (using public transport) from a term time address. They explicitly noted they had investigated the impact of using different definitions of commuter students when analysing student outcomes which led them to identifying commuters as their sixth risk category.
When identifying commuters in APPs, ten plans went into detail about the intersecting characteristics of this demographic of students. One provider noted that “commuter students are more likely to be Asian, black or from IMD Q1+2 than non- commuter students” – this is something Kulvinder Singh looked at earlier in the series. There were several links between the association of being a commuter and being from an underrepresented group such as a mature student, carer or from a geographical area of deprivation.
One provider interrogated whether being a commuting student was a direct factor on student outcome metrics and opted that it, in fact, coincided with other risk factors.
Mind the gap
For plans that had identified a risk to the commuter student experience, a brief thematic analysis suggests continuation, completion and student outcomes metrics were most prevalent in the sample followed by cost (and transport costs) and its subsequent impact on belonging.
A lack of flexible timetabling was highlighted several times as a structural challenge for commuting students and plans honed in on the preciousness of commuters’ time.
Bridging the gap
Many universities plan to implement student centric timetables to tackle barriers to engagement and include plans to inform students as early as possible about scheduled classes. Flexible modes of learning, better communication methods and early timetables then further reduces peak-travel commuting costs, easing financial pressures.
A handful of universities offer pre-arrival events and bursaries, aimed at improving commuter student access. At Manchester Metropolitan University, for example, an introductory module to support students preparing for university was particularly valued by commuting students.
Interventions also emphasised the importance of space, with providers reviewing physical and virtual facilities, creating dedicated spaces to study and relax and improving the visibility of existing commuter spaces. The University of York’s APP suggested a provision of subsidised accommodation on campus to support commuters to engage in evening and social events.
Peer mentoring programmes, social prescribing, and the creation of commuter student networks are examples of belonging-based interventions. York St John University’s plan proposed social opportunities each month and drop-ins for commuters to be held as often as weekly on campus.
Many plans recognised a need to better understand the commuter student population. This often manifested as a commitment to engage or set up working groups and projects. Some providers viewed additional research as a first step toward supporting commuters, while others built on existing work and recognised that ongoing consultation offered the best way to deliver support.
As many of these plans have started to, counting commuters, recognising their experience is geographical and making them visible is the first step to service design with commuter students in mind. Our series has been exploring ways to support their experience through making space, pedagogy, data, shifting institutional thinking and transport agendas that may inspire providers ready to take the next step.
This blog is part of our series on commuter students. Click here to see the other articles in the series.
