You won’t find it on any university curriculum or reading list, but for new students heading off to stick their heads in books in September with the hope of emerging with a degree, a complimentary lesson in housing inequality is up for grabs.



The National Union of Students reports a typical £8,000 shortfall between living costs and income from loans and grants, which has to be made up through work or, more likely, debt. Reports that banks were luring in valuable student customers with interest-free overdrafts of up to £3,000 was met with surprise by older readers, but is perfectly understandable to recent graduates.

Rent remains the biggest worry for poorer students: rents have surged everywhere, not just in London and Oxford and other places in the south-east . At the same time, the student loan rate has barely risen: when I started college just under 10 years ago, my loan was around £4,500 and my weekly rent £62. The same hall now costs £105 per week, a 70% increase, while the loan outside of London stretches to £5,500, a mere 22% rise.

But university life now resembles a microcosm of the housing crisis too: more and more luxury flats, specifically for students, are popping up in student heavy areas. On the same day the Observer reported on the cost-of-living crisis for students reliant on loans and grants, the paper also wrote about an eye-wateringly expensive development in Exeter offering students flats for £10,710 a year before adding “while the room might look ‘high-end’, even this level of provision is somewhat behind the curve.”

Higher education is supposed to be the great leveller, promising meritocracy and social mobility for the bright and determined: instead, the rent problem enforces hierarchies and stratification very quickly. For students who are struggling to make ends meet, who don’t have family money propping them up, part-time work and debt are inevitable, and on graduation there’s little hope of paying off the debt accrued quickly.

For richer students, the trajectory post-university is straightforward: graduate debt-free, have the funds splashing around to take an internship or take further postgraduate courses, then get family help to buy your first home.

For poorer students, graduating with an immediate debt on top of the need to raise a deposit for a rented flat, the pressure is on to quickly find paid work, undermining their ability to be canny and picky about job offers. A recent report underlined this: state-school educated graduates earn on average £1,300 a year less than a privately educated graduate colleague in a similar job. Within four years the earnings gap grows to £4,450, with the average privately educated employee earning £36,036 – 14% more than their state-educated counterpart, who takes home £31,586.

The scrapping of grants is a further blow for poor students. The maintenance loan was helpful for me at university, but the grants were a godsend – and were mercifully not added to my student loan debt. This is because they were for poor students, and penalising victims of inequality for their own poverty was rightly seen as anathema. Now though, the Conservatives plan to add it to student debt. If you are poor at university, expect to get poorer.

The housing crisis is often painted as a temporary blip, with renters and potential homeowners told to bide their time and work hard to weather the storm. But for students the housing crisis can have a hugely detrimental effect on life chances, earning potential and even their ability to gain a good degree, since students are working more hours than ever to even fund their studies. If university is the best catalyst for social mobility, sadly the student housing crisis is the biggest barrier to equality facing aspirational graduates.

Sign up for your free Guardian Housing network newsletter with news and analysis sent direct to you every Friday. Follow us: @GuardianHousing