The Secret Life of Students 2022

The Secret Life of Students is the essential event for anyone working on policy and delivery for students in higher education.

Now in its third year, the Secret Life of Students is all about how we rethink the student experience – bringing together experts, sector leaders and professionals, as well as student leaders and students’ union managers, to tackle difficult challenges and work together to transform higher education to better meet the needs of the next generation of students.

This year we’re doing diversity differently, rethinking the outdated model of designing learning environments based on an imagined “normal” student and then applying sticking plaster interventions based on diverse student characteristics. A new approach is needed to stay in step with how students think about diversity, experience higher education in diverse ways, and what a genuinely diverse student body might need from professionals, and each other to feel that they belong in higher education.

We’ll reflect on the findings of the UPP Foundation’s Student Futures Commission on tackling the challenges for students post-Covid, and we’ll consider developments in regulatory regimes for access, diversity and equality. We’ll think through how engaging with students’ lived experience can transform strategy, policy and delivery, and we’ll consider what students are experiencing and saying about harassment and discrimination, and the boundaries between security and freedom. We’ll have a wealth of new insight to share from our own research with students and higher education professionals and leaders.

View the full programme