Recent announcements on increases in student fees and maintenance loans together with the current state of UK university finances have pointed to the need to re-assess how universities manage and deliver their student support funds through bursaries, scholarships, hardship payments and the like.
Universities need to ensure that they have maximum impact at the same time as achieving savings and efficiencies. There is significant investment in student support yet what students do with it, the benefits accrued, and the eventual impact of this investment often goes unnoticed.
While this additional money is expected to make a significant difference to recruitment, retention, and performance there is little evidence to track such outcomes.
We have the data
Our latest analysis, we believe, the largest of this type in the sector (covering the academic year 2023-24) within our report The Shape of Student Financial Support highlights these issues and is based on our partnerships with more than 30 UK universities and the deployment of payments totalling almost £40-million to over 162,000 students using our Aspire solution. We are also able to compare trends with the previous year (2022-23).
Jim Dickinson has recently raised questions about the level of funding that universities will now devote to such support and posed questions about per student allocations, while Justine Andrew highlights the need for collaboration and efficiencies in order for the sector to survive in her article.
Our report identifies that the universities delivering funding using our Aspire solution are allocating an average of £244 per student (which provides a partial answer to one of Jim Dickinson’s questions), have a collective range of 786 funding streams in place (on average that’s about 24 in each institution), and that cash-based (as opposed to voucher or credit based) transactions are increasingly being preferred – with students using Aspire to help with budgeting, withdrawing their cash allocation over two or three transactions.
User preference
We also share detailed insights on how this funding is being used. Last year we reported how inflationary pressures on student living had driven 63 per cent of this cash funding to support daily student living costs – accommodation charges, energy and other bills, food and groceries. This year has seen pretty much of a repeat of that pattern (with 62 per cent of cash support being used for that purpose). Other major allocations are being made to: travel costs, work placement (or job-related) needs, and personal health and wellbeing.
When it comes to the use of credit-based awards, universities are tending to direct these to enabling students to purchase and to access digital technology and online subscriptions (with 53 per cent of credits being used for that purpose). Roughly 18 per cent of credit support goes to course-specific equipment and resources – but this looks set to increase based on conversations about the need to better connect investment intentions and student success.
When gathering feedback from a specific sample of 4,000 funding beneficiaries (who are based at those universities using Aspire) we have found that their future preference is for greater flexibility and the need to learn how to manage the pace of their budget spending better over a longer period. They also want a quicker pace of funding access at a time when many finance offices are under severe strain and need to make efficiencies. Our report highlights the efficiencies that can be made by delivering student financial support via Aspire – supporting Justine Andrew’s vision.
But what does this mean for the sector and what does it mean for students?
As we start to help the sector better understand the behaviours, benefits and impact of financial support through our analysis, we feel that this will provide a tool to help shape the delivery of such support to achieve the best possible outcomes, whilst driving process efficiencies and enhancing student experience.
Whenever I talk to universities about their investment in scholarships, bursaries and hardship funds, I also ask them to consider two things, firstly what is important to the student in terms of: How much? How often? And for what purpose? And secondly, what are the process efficiencies that can be derived by the application of better technology to deliver that support.
I am keen to hear how other institutions are tackling the challenges and demands when it comes to the deployment of this type of funding and to add to the growing evidence base of universities that can help me to track the future patterns across the sector to ensure that future funding has more significant impact and can be delivered as efficiently as possible.
