How the housing crisis is destroying university life

Universities around the country are facing financial crises. Last year’s announcements of mass redundancies at ANU, UTS and Canberra universities are just the first signs of a coming wave of job losses in the sector.

Engaging in campus life might alleviate isolation for young people, but the barriers to participation seem overwhelming.Credit: Louise Kennerley

There’s also a second, less obvious crisis in tertiary education. The economic pressures facing young Australians are upending the traditional social dynamics of university life. Students’ education is being impoverished as a result. Simply put, many students can’t afford to regularly attend class.

At many universities, most students study part-time. It’s common for students to spend more hours in paid employment than study. Meanwhile, housing costs make living near major campuses unaffordable.

Once a rite of passage, the student share-house is almost dead. It is increasingly common for students to live with their parents and travel long distances to campus. Less fortunate students face precarious housing, food insecurity and financial stress. Parking fees have become an important revenue line for cash-strapped universities. For those students who have no option but to drive, the cost of parking can be prohibitive.

Increasingly students wonder if it’s worth coming to class. A generation raised on social media, smartphones and remote study is experiencing unprecedented challenges of loneliness and poor mental health. Engaging in campus life might alleviate this isolation, but barriers to participation seem overwhelming.

Many universities are responding to students’ stress by adjusting assessments. In-class assessments that require students to attend campus and work collaboratively are being abolished or cut back. Continuous assessments such as weekly reading tasks or class discussions where repeating deadlines cause students stress are being abolished.

No matter that the opportunity to engage – and learn – with peers is what many students report they enjoy most about university. The latest QILT (quality indicators for learning and teaching) data, which measures student satisfaction with their university experience, shows that in most study areas, students reported more dissatisfaction with level of “engagement with peers” than any other aspect of study.

The short-term logic for reduced assessment is impeccable. The generation of students whose high school life was ruined by COVID-19 lockdowns now face unprecedented cost-of-living pressures if they attend university. This generation has received such a raw deal, the argument goes, that it is genuinely unfair, on top of everything else, to expect them to come to class.

Yet the long-term result of this thinking may be the demise of the physical university and a profoundly diminished educational experience. What is the value proposition of the physical university in a world of global content distribution and cheap, highly curated online courses? Why do students still enrol in Sydney universities? In part, it is because government loans support local study. But it’s also because universities are embedded in local communities.

Universities don’t simply offer education. At their best, they are also social institutions that connect students to personal and professional networks that will enrich their entire lives. These social networks help students learn and are also important for well-being. If Australian universities are to retain the public’s support in the long term, they will need to consciously nurture this “social capital”. The face-to-face interaction involved in collaborative classroom work is precisely the kind of activity that builds social networks.

Universities have undergone decades of reform under governments across the political spectrum. Today they are increasingly corporatised institutions that prioritise narrow economic and social objectives through the production of “job-ready” graduates. This vocational focus is important. However, it overshadows one of the university’s fundamental missions: cultivating good and thoughtful citizens.

Social networks on campus help students learn and are also important for well-being.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Assessment does need to be redesigned to reflect the realities of student lives. However, assessment redesign should be attentive to enhancing the social benefits of education. Friendships and social networks form through repeated interactions and collaboration. And stripping back education standards can’t be the only response to intergenerational injustice.

Australia is still a rich country. Students are paying more for their education than ever before. We should be able to give our young people secure food and housing, and the breathing space to think, mature and form communities.

Michelle Arrow and Tanya Evans are history academics at Macquarie University; Jonathan Symons is an academic at the School of International Studies.

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