As more and more students travel from their home to study, grappling with all the challenges of supporting commuter students has become the norm for the sector.
How do we create a sense of belonging for these students, how do we make their time on campus as positive as possible and how do we increase attendance and then keep them on campus? It’s often approached as a problem to fix.
And at the University of Worcester we did just this. And we’ve had some great solutions – providing fridges and microwaves, so commuters could bring and store food. Students services have run “fancy a cuppa” sessions throughout the week so that students have space to gather at no cost and many academic teams are developing flexible approaches to delivery that recognise the challenges of travel.
But behind the scenes colleagues were starting to recognise that the reasons for commuting and the challenges this created were complex, multi-faceted and far reaching.
Commuting students are now the majority of our students and this impacts on the experience for all students – getting it right for commuting students means getting it right for all students.
We need to shift our thinking from commuters as a problem to solve to instead how can the university change and adapt across the institution to meet the evolving needs of our students.
We needed to listen
We needed to understand the why, the how and the impact of daily travel to university. And to do this we needed to raise the profile of these students with those tasked with decision making across the university.
We launched “listening lunches” to combat survey fatigue and facilitate comfortable spaces in the middle of the day where students could drop in on their own terms, have a free lunch and share anything that was on their minds.
Travelling to campus daily involved managing caring responsibilities, school runs, late or cancelled trains and the impact of travel disruption caused by flooding and road closures. When students were unable to attend it meant disrupted classes, low attendance and made it harder for students to maintain group assignments.
It wasn’t all negative. Students shared examples of thoughtful and reactive responses from staff who were aware of these challenges and were adapting their practice accordingly. Crucially, this wasn’t formalised or widely applied.
Where staff were finding ways to support students’ engagement and students had the opportunity to talk to staff about their experience and seeing things being done as a result, this improved how students felt about the university.
Examples where students felt heard, and where their engagement was not measured in attendance but in participation, were particularly positive.
Making a case for change
While we had anecdotal evidence from multiple sources, it wasn’t being captured in our formal feedback mechanisms, and therefore wasn’t being centred in discussions.
As part of our sustainability initiatives, we have run a student travel survey for a number of years – surveys were widely seen as important in shaping students’ experience – this was an opportunity to formally gather the feedback we had had anecdotally.
The surveys were adapted to incorporate questions relating to “commuting students” and we asked students what measures could be put in place to support their participation. Unsurprisingly a lot of the feedback was around the cost of travel, including the cost and availability of car parking and the impact of poor public transport.
Our second round of listening lunches took the feedback from this survey back to the students as a series of discussion prompts. A complex picture started to emerge that touched on areas such as sustainability, widening participation, retention, campus experience, learning and teaching and support services.
These are not necessarily areas that have always had a central focus on commuters.
We need to talk about commuter students on a much broader scale across institutions.
To do this, we’re sharing our understanding across the university, via formal committees and working groups as well as building a diverse network of colleagues who can centre the needs of commuter students in any and all conversations about the student experience.
For example, colleagues who are now members of the transport and travel group have been able to support campus-based students needing to travel to placement with timely and affordable university managed transport.
Building an institutional agenda
In order to adequately support commuter students, support can’t be centred in one department. Here’s some ways to think about commuter students across an institution.
Find ways to first centre the student voice in building your understanding of how students participate and engage when living off campus. Then consider ways to broaden the conversation to include colleagues from less obvious areas of the university such as sustainability, EDI, retention and outcomes, resources and facilities as well as continuing to include colleagues from student services and academic schools.
Reframe the way you consider engagement to go beyond attendance and towards participation and consider that there are more students impacted by commuting than you may first think.
Don’t view commuters as the problem, but instead a valued and core part of your student community. Making sure your university works for commuters means that it also works for all students.
Long breaks between lectures on campus are common and when it comes to downtime between lectures, a study or hospitality space isn’t always sufficient. Meaningful things to do on campus makes commuters feel part of a community. At Worcester we’ve co-created the “You Matter” programme to facilitate this with drop-in creative focused activities during the day.
Finally commuter students’ lives are busy and complex. They place a great deal of importance on how close the university is to their home, i.e. relocating is not a priority or an option due to complex responsibilities. The cost and availability of transport options have a significant impact on students’ ability to attend and students are often juggling family, part-time work and study in an increasingly challenging financial climate.
The more institutions begin by understanding this, the better. Only then can you build an agenda across an institution to recognise, value and support commuters.
This blog is part of our series on commuter students. Click here to see the other articles in the series.
That’s a nice article. Would be good to know why “long breaks between lectures on campus are common” and if the instution has tried to optimise the timetable for all students.
I think a lot of study is self-led and these gaps can be intentional for students to spend time studying or researching outside of a lecture hall. I believe these times on campus are just as important for them building networks and communities as the ones spent in a classroom.
Thanks Gus.
This is a significant challenge – and one where a shift in thinking is required – we are working on it!