Students are still facing issues accessing essential digital services

This is a seven per cent increase from last year’s findings. When looking at international students this figure shot up to almost half (47 per cent), with similarly high figures for Asian students (47 per cent) and Black students (44 per cent).

Yet under the Office for Students (OfS) regulatory condition B2, students should have access to appropriate devices, software, and technical infrastructure, including decent wifi, at no extra cost. As I spoke about back in May, despite these regulatory conditions in England suggesting this should be happening, it seems these conditions are still not being met for some students. In fact, it looks like things have gotten worse.

Like last year, most respondents (61 per cent) were home-domiciled students, 31 per cent were international students and 7 per cent were transnational students, with 28,679 respondents from 40 different organisations. However, it should be noted when comparing data that the institutions participating each year varies, so year-to-year change needs to be seen as indicative rather than definitive.

Access to devices and digital tools was also uneven depending on demographic group. Most students used laptops (92 per cent) and smartphones (73 per cent) regularly for learning, with the usage of mobiles for learning increasing by ten per cent over the past two years.

However, owning a laptop does not necessarily mean it is suitable for learning, as some said their laptops were not of a high enough specification to cope with the demands of their course, or they had issues with slow processing power and battery life. There are questions around how to ensure students have access to appropriate tools from both an equity point of view, as well as meet the minimum requirements from the regulator.

Nearly a quarter (22 per cent) of students said they required financial support to buy devices, though only a third (33 per cent) were offered financial help if they needed it and only thirteen per cent were loaned or given devices by their organisation. Although providers will want to ensure any equipment they provide students with is suitable for the student’s needs. As highlighted in the recent OfS quality assessment report for computing courses at the University of Northampton, laptops were available for students to use but students reported they were too old to run the software needed for the course.

Concerningly, 42 per cent of students said they did not have a private area to study, an eight per cent increase from the 2022-23 survey.

Students faced a multitude of difficulties with digital technologies in their learning both on and off campus. Here international students were also worse off and more likely to have experienced several different, and often intersecting issues like high mobile data costs and no access to wifi. Wifi issues came up repeatedly in the free text comments with students expressing a strong desire for networks to be improved across campus, woeful tales of poor signal strength and reliability of access.

22 per cent of students said they had used artificial intelligence technologies as part of their learning, with some of these (16 per cent) having been offered specific training on the appropriate use of AI tools. Yet many lamented struggling to access the basics like appropriate software or there being a lack of support for course-specific software (26 per cent).

There’s a bit of a conundrum for providers here. In new questions, more than half of students said they undertook paid work to mitigate living expenses, with around 40 per cent not travelling to campus due to travel-related costs, while another 40 per cent said they went to campus to minimise personal costs – presumably bills at home. Students also said they valued digital course resources like lecture recordings because it meant they did not have to travel to campus if more or work (among others) were a problem.

It does feel a little confusing for an institution to decide where best to invest in digital infrastructure. Is it best to invest in on-campus infrastructure like improving wifi, access to specialist software, creating more spaces to work, and ensuring at the very least students, when on campus, have all the materials and private space they need to complete their course?

Or should they invest in ensuring individual students have access to new digital devices, either through bursaries, donations or loaning schemes?

The more students who are meant to be full time students become part-timers because of competing pressures on their time, and with more having seemingly nowhere appropriate to work privately at home, it makes sense that institutions invest in campus physical and digital infrastructure by ensuring there are comfortable, accessible spaces to work that are open at flexible times. Yet as money, resources, and everything else gets squeezed, the likelihood of significant change over the next year feels slim.