Universities Australia CEO Belinda Robinson. The situation is worse for students from poor families and indigenous backgrounds, where the great majority experience severe financial distress. Based on a survey of nearly 12,000 students across the university sector, the report says the financial demands on almost half of all students outstrip their earnings. It concluded that 80 per cent of full-time undergraduates work an average of 16 hours a week; a third regularly miss classes because of their jobs, and 17 per cent say they often go without food or other necessities. Half of students say the demands of their jobs affect their performance at university - a 10 percentage point increase since the last report on student finances was released in 2006. ''It's really difficult to live out of home and work enough to pay rent while trying to keep up with uni,'' says one young woman, a full-time undergraduate. ''It is difficult to prioritise what is more important - the short-term stresses of working enough hours per week to pay rent and bills and be able to buy food, or the long-term stresses of doing enough uni work throughout the semester to achieve good results. Living at home is not an option so I am not left with any alternatives other than to battle every week with rent and food expenses, inconsistent and unconfirmed work. I want to finish my degree, as that is obviously the end goal. However, many times I have considered quitting altogether and not finishing because my income is not enough to support me.''

Student finance surveys have been conducted every five years since the mid-1970s and, although they have always offered a fairly stark picture of students struggling to survive at university, the latest report is almost Dickensian in its presentation of students trying to cope with the demands of study and the need to find the money for food and clothing, not to mention shelter. The 113-page report says more than a quarter of employed full-time undergraduates work more than 20 hours per week, yet two out of three earn less than $20,000 a year, which is below the poverty line, and that includes 21 per cent who try to live on incomes of less than $10,000. As a result, half of all undergraduates rely on some form of financial support from their family. ''This report clearly shows that financial stress on university students is increasing,'' says Belinda Robinson, chief executive of Universities Australia. ''While the impact of this on dropout rates and future enrolments is unclear, it is of sufficient concern to justify close monitoring - particularly in the context of meeting the government's goal to have 20 per cent of students from low socio-economic backgrounds enrolled by 2020.'' Australian higher education has changed substantially since the last longitudinal study of university students' finances in 2006, the report notes. The changes have led to large increases in participation in higher education, with many older students entering the system, and more from families in which a university education has not been the norm, ''particularly since the uncapping of domestic undergraduate places last year''.

Although there have been welcome increases by the government in student income support and the extension of that support to many masters-by-coursework students, as well as a greater focus on equity than was the case previously, the report also highlights the grim financial situation most students face. ''There has always been a degree of diversity present in the student cohort, yet the present study indicates that this diversity is increasing, such that it is difficult to describe what an 'average' student might be,'' the report says. ''For example, reliance on income from allowances from family has increased as a proportion of undergraduate student income since 2006, but so too has reliance on income from government. Fewer students are working in paid employment, but those that are working are working slightly longer hours. This suggests a greater stratification of students according to their financial means.'' That stratification shows up among full-time local students who are worried by the plight of their finances: more than 40 per cent are over 25 years of age compared with just 23 per cent in the not worried group. The older worriers are also more likely to be renting and not relying on their families for help. ''The concern these students express about their financial situation is not unjustified and has real negative outcomes for them: they are about three times as likely to have had to defer their studies because of finances at some point than are others and, most tellingly, one in four of those who often worry about finances indicate they regularly go without food or other necessities because they cannot afford them,'' the report says.

''These findings suggest that policy around income support schemes needs to be revisited to ensure that levels of income support are appropriate to the increasing number of non-school-leavers entering the system; people who are independent of their family and have a range of adult responsibilities.'' Part-time students tend to be older than those studying full-time and are also more likely to be partnered than single, are more likely to care for dependants, less likely to receive financial support from others, and more likely to be living in their own home. A slightly higher proportion of part-time students reported having a disability and there was a high incidence of mental health issues, among part-time undergraduates in particular and among indigenous students. The report concluded that the average income for international students was ''not dissimilar'' to that of domestic students although they earned a substantially smaller proportion from paid employment and a obtained a substantially larger proportion from family allowances. It says three out of every five foreign undergraduates were living on incomes less than $20,000 a year in 2012, although a quarter of undergraduates and one in five postgraduate coursework students had incomes of less than $10,000 a year. ''In 2012, the average amount of savings expended by international undergraduate and postgraduate coursework students was much greater than that by domestic students. For undergraduates, the amount was nearly four times as much of their savings, at an average of $10,008, and for postgraduate coursework students, more than twice as much, at $11,274,'' the report says. Because their visas restrict the number of hours they can work, foreign students are less likely to have paid jobs compared with their local counterparts, and they work fewer hours per week. Nevertheless, more than half had been in employment at some time in the past 12 months and, on average, they worked between 11 and 17 hours a week during semester, the report says.

In a curious finding, the report says a high proportion of students do not apply for Austudy or Youth Allowance income support. Only about one in five undergraduates apply for Austudy and even then almost half have their application rejected. Greater numbers of undergraduates apply for and receive the Youth Allowance: nearly half of full-time undergraduates apply, and 67 per cent receive either full or partial rates of support. The report says the most common reason for not applying for an allowance cited by those who did not apply was that they believed their application would not have been successful. It says this was probably because large proportions of the students have parents in professional or managerial occupations and would be unlikely to pass the parental income test.