The Roar View: Stop Pricing Students out of King’s

This editorial was first published in print on 8 December 2025.

As our reporting in this Winter Print Edition shows, King’s students have had enough. They aren’t asking for luxuries – just a fair shot at the basics. Rent that doesn’t wipe them out, a bursary that keeps pace with reality, and participation in campus life that isn’t a pay-to-play privilege. In 2025, many students are burned out due to exhaustion. Whether it’s working hours each week to make ends meet, or applying for yet another job that you already know you’ll never hear back from. Meanwhile, King’s still congratulates itself on schemes that have not kept up with the moment.

Across the country, the picture is bleak. This year’s Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) survey found that the proportion of undergraduates in paid work has increased again, to roughly two-thirds – a 12-point jump in a single year. Among those working, students averaged 14.5 hours a week in 2024. The pressure on students is not easing; it’s becoming more acute than ever. Now it’s default; students are working to live, to pay the rent each month – and the hours come out of study, sport and sleep.

At King’s, the lived experience is no different. As our reporting in this edition shows, students are stitching together retail and hospitality shifts, some even pushed into precarious ‘gig’ work, just to meet the London baseline. They’ve told Roar they “never get to study”, that they organise reading around shift breaks, and that extracurricular campus life has split into those who can afford to participate and those who cannot. This isn’t community – it’s triage.

The university will point to the King’s Living Bursary. It matters, of course it does. But the reality is that it has lagged for far too long. For years, the maximum amount sat at £1,600 – and only this autumn have new students seen a modest lift to £2,000 for those in the lowest income band. Continuing students, meanwhile, remain at the old rates. How on earth can King’s justify a two-tier patchwork of bursary support that still trails basic costs?

Wider maintenance support has shrunk in real terms, too. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimates that even after recent upratings in the maintenance loan, the poorest students in England will have around £1,125 less in real terms in 2025/26 than in 2020/21 – roughly a 10% cut in purchasing power. This new normal of more term-time work and less time for student life outside the classroom cannot persist.

King’s will also cite KAAS – the King’s Affordable Accommodation Scheme. It is, in principle, a good policy. But enshrining a cap and allocating only on a first-come, first-served basis is not a guarantee of affordability in a city where affordability vanishes so quickly. No wonder students plan their lives around commutes and off-peak trains. National polling now finds almost half of students identify as commuters – something that is fundamentally a financial choice and not a lifestyle one. If King’s really wants to boast a capital-city campus, it must design for a commuter reality rather than simply pretend it isn’t happening.

Then there is extra-curricular participation. Analysis conducted by Roar for this edition makes plain that the cost of joining and competing in sports clubs has drifted out of reach for too many, with “recreational” prices that rarely feel recreational and competition tiers that punish ambition. Students don’t stop caring about teams or societies when term starts biting; they are inherently priced out of what keeps most students sane. If “belonging” is a King’s mantra, it cannot be a commodity.

Some will argue that universities themselves are the victims of a financial squeeze – and this is certainly true across the board. The government has shifted the undergraduate fee cap to £9,535 for 2025/26. But system-level fixes are no alibi for institutional drift. When finances move, so too should priorities. In a year where fees are edging upwards and students’ living costs still outrun basic support, the burden of proof sits with King’s to show that support is reaching those who need it most.

The Roar View is simple. King’s should stop designing policy for the imaginary student who never works, lives five minutes away from the Strand, and has unlimited cash for train fares. The real student in 2025 juggles shifts, commutes from home and counts the pennies before committing to anything with a price tag. And the mental health toll of being priced out of the student community is all too real. 

If that is the centre of gravity, then additional support must follow. A Living Bursary that doesn’t stagnate for half a decade, accommodation support that isn’t a scramble for a limited pot and a participation model that doesn’t sort students by family income at the door.

King’s College London sells a world-class education in the most expensive city in the UK. That proposition stands or falls on whether students can actually live the life they’re sold – not just attend lectures – but join societies, train in a sports club, build friendships and thrive.

The last edition of this paper argued that the degree guarantee is dead. The corollary is that the support guarantee must be alive. If the job market won’t hand you certainty, your university had better not hand you avoidable stress. Students don’t need another email telling them to “make the most of King’s”. They need King’s to make the most of them – and now.