Over a quarter of young people don’t understand the student finance system

Based on a representative survey of just over 1,000 young people, aged between 15-21 year olds, as someone who has trained student leaders who fit into this age category recently, this doesn’t feel shocking. I’ve had quite a few conversations with friends, many of whom have taken out student loans at some point in the past decade, who don’t actually understand the terms of the loans that they have taken out. For friends who didn’t go down the university route, there’s even more confusion.

Overall the report suggests that this is particularly true amongst disadvantaged young people who find the higher education system “opaque” and do not have adequate knowledge to know how to, nor the confidence, to navigate it.

What is especially interesting about this report, however, is the way in which some of the qualitative research was conducted.

Due to limitations of published literature explicitly measuring non-academic knowledge in the UK, the researchers felt they needed to carry out qualitative research, including interviewing 150 young adults in their twenties. They asked them to reflect on their transition from education and into employment.

All of this feels fairly standard research practice. The difference here is the SMF utilised an AI chatbot to conduct the interviews.

To do this they had to train the chatbot by providing it with a series of key questions to cover, as well as giving explanations of the key things the researchers were trying to get out of each question. Then they had to train it on how to prioritise its time, for instance to try and get two or three examples per question but to ensure there was enough time to cover all questions.

There’s questions here around if research is to be conducted in this way, for example what researchers have to provide about the definitions and explanations they fed the chatbot.

The scope and larger sample a chatbot can gather in a limited amount of time compared to a human trying to recruit participants for a focus group compared to the 150 people the chatbot surveyed is fascinating from a sample size perspective.

Beyond the innovative research method, the report highlights something that has come up time and time again in conversations around widening access but still feels no less concerning to read.

Students who were first in the family were less likely to ask friends and family for career advice and were more likely to misunderstand which A levels are preferred for university courses.

Disparities can also be seen when young people enter the labour market. Private school students were eleven per cent more likely to have spoken to careers advisors at school and felt more confident in the options available to them, and were more likely to deploy “alternative and assertive” tactics when seeking job opportunities.

As the SMF recommends, making work experience and embedding careers guidance deeper into the curriculum during compulsory and post-compulsory education can help to start to make this space more equitable.