The maintenance loan fades into the background

Both are cited by around 45 per cent of respondents in this year’s Unite Students Applicant Index as sources they plan to draw on, below family support (51 per cent) but above savings.

It’s an expectation that has shifted without any formally announced policy intervention – another drift by stealth – and a reminder of how dangerous it is to be basing the standard maintenance figure we expect international students to arrive with on the maximum English maintenance loan.

The loan used to be the system’s primary mechanism for supporting students from lower-income backgrounds. The data suggests applicants no longer expect it to play that role alone, one cohort at a time.

That is, assuming they understand their loan at all. A new question this year finds that only 38 per cent of UK applicants feel confident they understand the terms and conditions of the money they are borrowing.

The more counterintuitive finding is who is less confident – Soc A applicants (the most affluent group) are at 41 per cent confident versus 43 per cent for Soc E, and are more likely to say they are not confident (30 per cent vs 23 per cent). The likeliest explanation is that more affluent applicants engage more critically with the complexity of the loan system and know what they do not know, while less affluent applicants have already made their decision and are less focused on the detail

Either way, the idea that financial literacy is primarily a problem for the least advantaged is not borne out here.

The financial picture also breaks very differently by gender. Male applicants are 18 percentage points more likely to feel they have enough money to cover their costs (54 per cent vs 36 per cent), 16 points more confident about budgeting (67 per cent vs 51 per cent), and 17 points more confident about understanding their loan (51 per cent vs 34 per cent). Three separate financial confidence measures, all showing the same gap.

The headline is that nine in ten applicants now expect to work during term time, and the press release describes this as evidence that paid work has “become part of the student experience.” Joe Lister, CEO of Unite Students, frames it as applicants making “clear, pragmatic decisions,” while acknowledging that maintenance support has not kept pace with rising living costs.

Show your working

87 per cent is an intentions figure, and the HEPI/Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey, which tracks students already at university, shows a consistent gap between expectation and reality.

In 2025, 68 per cent of full-time undergraduates actually worked during term time – itself a striking rise from 56 per cent in 2024 and 42 per cent in 2020, but still around 20 percentage points below what that year’s applicants intended. The 2026 SAES, published this month, puts the figure at 65 per cent.

Roughly one in five applicants who plan to work won’t end up doing so, probably through some combination of timetabling incompatibility, the discovery on arrival that academic workloads leave less room than expected, and not finding suitable jobs.

The question of whether there is enough work to go around lingers – the persistent gap between intention and outcome suggests the constraint is at least partly on the supply side.

On hours, the comparison is also fascinating. A third of applicants in this year’s index expect to work more than 16 hours a week. Among students who actually work, the SAES puts the average at around 13 to 14 hours – meaning expectations are running consistently above reality, at least in aggregate. The distribution is not even: among the 87 per cent planning to work, there is a tail of international applicants expecting very long hours. 41 per cent of international applicants expect to work up to eight hours a week (versus 18 per cent of UK applicants), but six per cent expect to work more than 40 hours (versus three per cent of UK applicants). A small but meaningful number of international students are planning to hold what amounts to a full-time job alongside a full-time degree.

The study time hit is real regardless – as term-time working surged to 68 per cent in the 2025 SAES, hours spent on independent study fell from 13.6 to 11.6 per week. For students who do combine study with paid work, total weekly commitments run to 44.2 hours – higher than the ONS national average for full-time employees, which is 36.6 hours. Applicants planning to work 20 hours a week alongside a full-time degree are not, on current evidence, fully pricing that in.

Home truths

Last year the headline wellbeing finding was that incoming student wellbeing had surpassed pre-pandemic levels for the first time – but it turned out international applicants were driving the improvement while UK applicants’ outlook remained broadly flat.

This year the ONS wellbeing indicators have all fallen after peaking in 2025, and the report acknowledges this fall is “mainly driven by a change in international applicants’ wellbeing.” International students propped up the positive story in 2025 and are now pulling it down in 2026.

For UK applicants, the ONS indicators have been more consistent across all five years of the index – which is another way of saying they haven’t improved. Nick Hillman’s foreword notes that incoming applicants are “increasingly well prepared for the realities of undergraduate life”, which feels like a stretch.

Buried in the finance section, the proportion of applicants who think it “very likely” they will not go into higher education has nearly doubled since 2024 – from four per cent to seven per cent. That three-point change is well above the margin of error for this sample, making it one of the cleaner findings in the report.

Overall, those thinking it at least “likely” they won’t go has risen from 32 to 35 per cent, though that three-point move is at the boundary of statistical significance and is better read as directional than definitive.

Among that group, mental ill-health as a stated reason has risen sharply, from 21 per cent in 2024 to 27 per cent now. And the proportion who had seriously considered a full-time job as an alternative to a degree has jumped from 29 per cent last year to 36 per cent this year – a seven-point move that clears the significance threshold comfortably.

There is one positive finding the report does not emphasise. Fitting-in anxiety – the proportion who agree they are anxious they will not fit in at university – has fallen from 49 per cent in 2024 to 44 per cent now, a five-point improvement that sits above the margin of error. It is a small but real signal of something improving in a dataset that is otherwise fairly consistent in going the other way.

The press release doesn’t mention the non-participation trend – it does mention that 65 per cent agree the cost of higher education is a worthwhile investment, which is also true, and a lot more comfortable.

It is worth noting that among Soc E applicants that figure is 56 per cent, but the standout finding is not scepticism – it is uncertainty. 33 per cent of Soc E applicants neither agree nor disagree that a degree is worthwhile, compared to 21 per cent of Soc A. Working-class applicants are not broadly negative about higher education’s value, they are less sure. That is a different policy problem.

Half the story

The mental health picture contains a worrying gap – half of all applicants say they have experienced at least one mental health issue in the past two years. Only 19 per cent disclose a mental health condition as a disability. Universities and SUs that have built support around self-identification – you refer yourself, you fill in a form, you disclose – are therefore working from less than half the picture on arrival.

The implication is that referral-dependent support models are structurally insufficient for the incoming cohort, and have been for some time.

For the third year in a row, 36 per cent of applicants in full-time education say they were absent from learning due to mental health in the past two years – the report describes this as a stable trend. Less stable is the duration – the proportion absent for more than 20 days has risen from 25 per cent in 2024 to 31 per cent this year.

And of those who have missed school due to mental health, 45 per cent now expect to miss teaching time at university for the same reason – up four percentage points on last year, equating to 16 per cent of all applicants. The report flags this “may have consequences for attainment and continuation” and moves on to the next section.

Among LGBTQ+ applicants, 61 per cent have missed school due to their mental health, against the 36 per cent average. Three in five LGBTQ+ students starting university this autumn have already had their prior learning disrupted by mental health. And 46 per cent of LGBTQ+ applicants feel lonely all or most of the time, against 21 per cent of non-LGBTQ+ applicants. Those two figures together describe a group arriving at university in a state of sustained social and educational vulnerability that is not a marginal concern.

Home alone

There is a counterintuitive finding in the independence section – UK applicants are less likely than international applicants to know how to access support such as healthcare (69 per cent against 82 per cent) and less confident about addressing issues independently (67 per cent against 85 per cent).

The report attributes this to better pre-arrival information being given to international students as a matter of course, while domestic students are largely expected to work it out.

The report suggests the same information should be given earlier to domestic applicants. That’s a low-cost, high-impact recommendation nestling in the independence section.

There is also a structural access barrier sitting in the data tables that does not appear in the report. A new question this year asks whether applicants can provide a rent guarantor – the UK-based person required by most private landlords and many accommodation providers to sign a legal liability contract. 41 per cent can provide one easily. 16 per cent cannot provide one at all. Among Soc E applicants, that rises to an estimated 34 per cent, against 15 per cent for Soc A. This is not a confidence gap or a wellbeing gap – it is a direct structural barrier to accessing most of the private rented sector.

Meanwhile, new admissions questions buried in the data tables reveal that only 44 per cent of applicants clearly understand how the admissions process works – meaning a majority do not. 15 per cent describe themselves as nervous about Clearing. Among LGBTQ+ applicants, that Clearing anxiety rises to 21 per cent and confidence in achieving required grades falls to 32 per cent against 36 per cent overall.

Meanwhile 82 per cent of applicants think their chosen course is a good fit for them, slightly down on last year. Consistently high regret scores in the HEPI/Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey suggest a meaningful proportion will work out they were wrong, which if nothing else underlines the case for active compliance with OfS Condition F2.

Meanwhile 40 per cent of applicants agree that social media has harmed their learning confidence and ability, rising to 48 per cent among those with a mental health condition and 48 per cent among LGBTQ+ applicants.

A new question on AI reveals another divide. 70 per cent of international applicants say AI chatbots guided their university decisions – course choice, university choice, accommodation. Among UK applicants the figure is 30 per cent. And 62 per cent of LGBTQ+ applicants say they are against the use of AI, compared to 30 per cent of non-LGBTQ+ applicants – the largest single demographic gap in the entire dataset on any question. Fascinating.