Anna Adamecz-Völgyi, Morag Henderson, and Nikki Shure.

As this new and unusual academic year starts taking shape, thousands of students are trying to settle into their new lives at university. For some students, going to university will seem like the obvious, normal thing to do. Others, especially those who are the first in their families to attend higher education, may be stepping into less comfortable new world.

A plethora of research shows that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to go to university and that if they go, they end up at lower ranked institutions, studying “lower value” courses than their peers from more advantaged backgrounds. At the same time, universities are actively engaging in the “Widening Participation (WP) agenda”, attempting to increase the diversity of their student body. But in order to attract students from disadvantaged backgrounds, universities first need to be able to identify who they are.

Our research will help them pinpoint (more…)

Sebastian Boo.

Mindfulness is a popular approach for boosting well-being. Intuitively, one would expect this technique to help students do better in their university studies. 

However, my new research finds that, while mindfulness promotes wellbeing in all students – surprisingly, for some it is associated with a drop in academic performance. 

Why should this happen?

(more…)

Is the sky really the limit when you’re from a poorer background? Pexels
Claire Callender. 
With various political parties pledging to abolish or alter tuition fees, the question of how to fund higher education is squarely back on the political agenda.
The Conservative government has argued in favour of tuition fees and student loans. It confidently declared that neither the abolition of undergraduate grants – which happened in 2016 – nor the proposed rise of full-time undergraduate tuition fees to (more…)