Staff Writer Alfie Ray explores the experience of being a working-student in one of the costliest cities in the world.

I have always been, for lack of a better word, “poor”.

Born to a single, working-class mother, my early years were filled with love, free school meals and the occasional eviction.

As a child, and maybe this was because I was a straight, white little boy with a charming smile and a knack for words, I never really felt that my class affected the way people treated me all that much. That was until it came time for secondary school, where I decided to try and take the 11-plus, an admissions test that provides students with a chance to study at an accelerated level in a grammar school.

Unlike most grammar school children, my family didn’t have the money for tutoring or practise tests and so I had to take the test the way nature intended – blindly. Thankfully, after a few guesses and a lengthy written piece about why I’d love to go on a school trip to Majorca, I was accepted. 

However, it was from this point on that I really got to experience how being from a low-income family can restrict your experience in school, both socially and academically. 

Whilst the other kids were off on ski trips to France or Italy, I had the privilege of staying at school to juggle with the local circus.

My classmates, armed with MacBooks and private tutors, got their homework done with help, in the comfort of their own home. My homework, like most UK students’ work, was completed in the school library, fuelled by Windows 7 pipe dreams and a love for Radnor Fizz. 

When it came time to choose a university, I knew my family’s financial situation would make me stick out like a sore thumb. After all, only 25 percent of lower-working class children, like me, go into higher education. 

Having spent the last year studying in London, I can tell you that being a working-class student does, in fact, make you stick out like a sore thumb. 

Sometimes…

The Unfortunate Facts of Studying in London:

According to a report written by the Sutton Trust, the UK’s leading social mobility charity, around one third of working-class students have had to skip meals to afford basic essentials. In addition, close to 50 percent of those students have had to greatly limit their social lives in order to pay for essentials. 

Bear in mind, these statistics reflect the whole of the UK.

Meanwhile, in London, the situation is even worse…

Whilst the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) estimates that the annual cost of living in London for students is just under £25,000, a maximum student maintenance loan only covers around half of this cost. This means that students without parental support, as per HEPI’s figure, must work, on average, a minimum of twenty hours a week alongside their degree to afford a living. 

“The harm students currently face cannot be overstated. Too many students are struggling to cover their basic costs, let alone participate fully in higher education. It is not only good policy: there is a moral imperative to give students a fair chance of succeeding and thriving in higher education”.

Josh Freeman, Author of the Report

Speaking from experience, living and studying in London is incredibly expensive. Whether it be extortionate accommodation fees, the looming threat of student debt, or overpriced shops, cafes and restaurants, the London student experience is a minefield of financial insecurity and economic anxiety. 

And so, I surveyed 11 working-class students from four different London universities about their experience living and studying in London to figure out whether I’m alone in my constant money worries.

Spoiler alert: I’m not!

The Funding Issue:

The first thing that stuck out to me when hearing from these students is that, like me, nearly everyone I spoke to funds their degree through more than one form of income.

Whether it be bursaries, scholarships, employment or savings, all but one of my responders had to personally fund themselves, despite being in receipt of costly student maintenance loans.

This brings me to one of the most common, and frankly frustrating, misconceptions about working-class students; that we’re “lucky” to be in receipt of high student loans. 

On more than one occasion, I’ve had one of my privileged, wealthier peers tell me that they wished that they got as much student finance as I did and that, if they had a yearly £14,000 loan from Student Finance England (SFE), their life would be so much easier.

One twenty-year-old undergraduate from King’s College London that I spoke to, who preferred to remain anonymous, seemed to know this sort of interaction all too well.

“Even friends will mention how “lucky” I am and how “jealous” they are that I get the maximum SFE loan amount and that I receive a bursary, unaware that it really isn’t lucky and lots of the money I receive from SFE is being spent on my family”.

Undergraduate Student, KCL

It is, in fact, not a privilege to be in receipt of maximum student loans: if anything, it’s a burden.

As the HEPI’s data reveals, maintenance loans from SFE don’t even begin to cover the basic expenses of living and studying in London, meaning that, often times, working-class students are forced to live outside of London where the cost of living is less oppressive. 

Another King’s student, who also chose to stay anonymous, had this to say:

“I can’t live in London which means I commute. There is no social life since everything is so expensive, and my local trains don’t run past midnight”. Undergraduate Student, KCL

And then there’s the financial anxiety that comes from being a working-class student in London. 

Ali, a twenty-seven-year-old undergraduate student at King’s, who had to put her degree on hold in order to secure sufficient funding, told me that she regularly worries about affording simple things like lunch or a coffee. 

“Multiple times a day, I’m wondering if I really should have that coffee, can I really afford to have lunch if I haven’t made it at home, if I can afford to get the train or I should really get the bus, at the cost of splitting up with my friend group who can afford the train”.

Ali, Undergraduate Student, KCL

This sort of anxiety, a worry I know very well, seems ironic to me.

Whenever a cushy finance bro or investment agent approaches you, they always use the simple analogy of “a cup of coffee” to explain how simple saving is:

“Instead of buying your daily coffee, just pop that money into a savings account, it’s really that simple!” They say.

“I can’t afford a monthly cup of coffee, let alone a daily one!” I reply, wishing I never spoke to the polyester-clad “banker” in the first place.

The Social Burden of Being Poor:

Whilst not being able to afford basic essentials certainly generates anxiety for working-class students, perhaps the most stressful part of studying in London is having to interact with students who judge your financial position.

A lot of the time, these interactions tend to come in the form of microaggressions.

“It’s grating when your mother is on universal credit, working excessive night shifts and you have a rich person talking about how hard their parents work to have that money”.

Lily, Undergraduate Student, KCL

Of course, the “rich person” in this story probably meant no harm when they talked about how hard their parents work. 

Maybe… hopefully?

However, these sorts of interactions highlight a general ignorance towards the lives of less-wealthy students. 

On multiple occasions, I’ve had wealthier peers look at me in shock when I tell them that I can’t afford to go out to eat with them. It’s almost like they can’t fathom a world in which a daily trip to Pret a Manger isn’t bankrolled by a parent. 

Unfortunately, this ignorance can also rear its head in some more aggressive, less “micro”, forms of elitism. 

“I feel like I get judged for “smelling” poor”.

Undergraduate Student, Courtald

“I was once told in first year that my writing stands out because “it reads like I didn’t go to private school”.

Undergraduate Student, KCL

Comments like these don’t come from ignorance, they come from hate.

I firmly believe that private schools breed a culture of elitism and disdain towards the working-class. Their position above most state schools in league tables, traps private school students within a bubble of wealth and elitism, meaning that misconceptions of the working-class can be developed without any proper intervention.

This, in turn, reinforces the divide between working and upper classes, which then leads to more and more inequality.

Children from working-class families enter university on an uneven playing field, there’s no simpler way to put it. So, who should be responsible for ending this plague of classism?

Universities vs Financial Insecurity: A Battle for the Ages

Personally, I feel that whilst classism is undoubtedly a systematic issue, universities should do more to combat income inequality. 

One of the best ways to cope with living under London’s extortionate cost of living is to be aware of just how much you’re expecting to spend, that way you can begin setting out a budget long before you even start university.

To some extent, London universities do try to make prospective students aware of the cost of living in London.

King’s, for instance, has a housing and financial advice page, which sets out exactly how much students should prepare to spend in one year of study.

According to this page, to live and study in London for a full academic year, a student would need to be able to spend £1770 per month on accommodation, food and other assorted fees. 

This advice would be helpful, if it wasn’t completely arbitrary.

There seems to be some divergence in how much London’s top universities expect their students to spend.

London School of Economics recommends that students to set aside £1550 per month to study in London.

Meanwhile, University College London only expects their students to spend around £1200 per month, a whole £500 less than what King’s expect from their students.

This means one of two things. 

That students from University College London are incredibly frugal or that these universities have very little awareness of just how costly living and studying in London really is. 

Upon further inspection, it seems like the latter may well be true. 

According to the HEPI’s estimated yearly living cost of £25000, a first-year student living in London would need closer to £2000 per month to support themselves.

Not only does this poor financial advice misrepresent the reality of living and studying in London, it also doesn’t give working-class students any real advice on how to secure sufficient funding for their studies.

“Money and Housing Advice focus on helping you budget, which is a critical skill, but doesn’t help me if not enough money is coming in the first place”.

Ali, Undergraduate Student, KCL

Whilst most universities provide some form of bursary or reduced-cost accommodation option for lower income students, they do very little in terms of solving the problem of income inequality in higher education.

One student I spoke to is in receipt of King’s affordable accommodation scheme (KAAS).

“KAAS is great and makes London Uni more accessible, but why should I not have access to my own bathroom or get a smaller room due to something out of my control, it’s not like the other students are paying their rent with their money it’s mostly their parents?”

This highlights how, even when universities introduce measures like rent-controlled accommodation, income inequality continues to persist through unequal living conditions. 

Furthermore, some students feel like their university does very little to even try to overcome income inequality.

One student from Royal Holloway told me that she felt that her university misallocates funding that should be put towards affordable accommodation.

“The university has a lot of on campus resources and an extensive library selection which caters to all my academic needs. Accommodation prices are still too high with little no to affordable living”. 

Kathryn, Undergraduate Student, Royal Holloway

Regardless of whether a university allocates funding and support for low-income students or not, it’s clear that their efforts aren’t enough to overcome financial inequality. 

So, what can the government do to help? 

Damn you, Tony Blair!

When Blair introduced university tuition fees in 1998, they were capped at £1000 per year. 

In less than 30 years, with the help of David Cameron’s Tory Government, these tuition fees have grown by nearly one thousand percent, maintenance grants have been swapped for loans and attendance has skyrocketed. UK universities now contribute over £200 billion to our economy.

Our economy should not be supported by the exploitation of working-class students. And yet, seemingly, it is: whilst graduates don’t have to start paying their student loan back until they earn £25000 per year, these loans are still accruing interest in the background, meaning that a student in receipt of maximum student finance (like me) could owe over £100,000 just ten years after graduation.

If the UK Government simply lowered, or even removed, interest fees on student loans for students from low-income families, a massive weight would be lifted from working-class students’ shoulders. 

‘The government should not be profiting off of student loans and working-class people should not be permanently financially disadvantaged from their colleagues just because we chose to go to university, higher education needs to be free and accessible for all UK students!’

Undergraduate Student, KCL

Another potential solution could involve the introduction of more government-subsidised benefits for students from low-income families.

‘Universities and the government could improve support for working-class students by providing automatic travel bursaries and adjusting maintenance loans to cover real living expenses’

Undergraduate Student, University of Greenwich

If government funded bursaries were reintroduced, universities would have a greater impetus to focus their funding on things they can control, such as accommodation costs.

Even better yet, if students had more support with smaller costs, like the cost of travel and study materials, they would be able to invest more of their student loans into everyday essentials, meaning that the one third of working-class students who regularly have to skip meals in order to afford their degree, would no longer go hungry. 

With all the Debt, Classism and Insecurity, Is Studying in London still Worthwhile?

Undoubtedly, yes.

I know that this goes against near most everything I’ve written in this article, but studying in London, at least for me, has been worth every penny.

Getting to live in the centre of the world’s greatest city reminds me every day that, despite adversity and financial inequality, I have got myself to where I am today through my own hard-work, determination and conviction.

That doesn’t mean that the experience of studying and living in London is always easy.

As a working-class student, you will most definitely face challenges that most students couldn’t even imagine dealing with. 

The government and universities most definitely need to do far more to support students from low-income families. And, hopefully, in years to come, things will get better.

However, all of the challenges, classism and debt you face as a working-class student are worth it for this one, very special feeling you’ll get once you’ve made it here: the feeling of knowing that you’ve brought yourself to London without the support of wealthy parents, without the promise of a nepotistic internship, without the benefits of private education. 

It’s a feeling of pride, of gratitude, and, perhaps most importantly, independence.

Suck on that Tony Blair.

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