"Students are barely studying anymore and they're just trying to survive."
This is the worrying message from the University of Manchester's student union as its student population struggles to cope with the cost of living crisis.
A new report has revealed that four out of five students (80 per cent) are worried about the current climate - and that over half are concerned about putting food on the table.
“This is such an essential need and yet students can't afford to meet that. So that's how you can tell that it's a crisis,” Tesnime Safraou, City and Community Officer from UMSU, told the Manchester Evening News.
The research also found that students are working more than the recommended hours by the university in order to make ends meet - some taking on full-time jobs alongside their studies due to increased financial pressure.
“We found that students are coping by borrowing money from family and friends," Tesnime added.
"For 26 per cent of them, using overdrafts and credit cards, taking additional loans, but we've seen a massive amount of testimonies of people saying they're taking multiple part-time jobs, much more than the 20 hours recommended by the university's guidelines.
"Some are working full-time jobs, while doing a full-time degree. The extent of the crisis has gone to a degree where students are barely studying anymore and they're just trying to survive in the first place.”
The report also revealed that five per cent of the 5,000 respondents said they considering dropping out of university altogether.
More than two thirds (67 per cent) said the cost of living crisis and financial strain was affecting their mental health and their wellbeing, and as high as 40 per cent were cutting back on essential spending to cope.
Tesnime added: “So we've had quite an extensive reporting survey that we provided from our research insight team which has been amazing supporting us in the work we've been doing.
“We've found out of more than 5,000 respondents, that 80 per cent of our students are concerned about the cost of living crisis and that it's affecting their health.
“So it's really tough on them and they're cutting back on essential spending for more than 40 per cent of them, which is a massive amount.
“It's really hard on students to be dealing with everything on top of the cost of living crisis.”
The UMSU are offering several supports to students who are struggling financially to help them with their studies.
“There is an advice service that gives emergency loans like literally money in your hands if you don't have food at home or can't even pay your bills and they can help you in applying to different funds and grants that the university has like the Cost of Living Support Fund, which is really helpful because sometimes that application can be quite tough on students.
“On top of that, we've had quite successful projects that we have this year like SU eats, which are little bags of groceries with recipes that we've been handing out for free to students. We've done that for quite a few weeks during semester one and it will be on again and semester two temporarily as well, but that's been helping a lot of students,” she said.
Housing is another major concern students are facing with the research showing almost half of students have, slightly or significantly, lowered their housing expectations and 19 per cent are considering changing their expectations to find more affordable homes next year.
“I think housing is the third massive concern for students when it comes to costs.
“A lot of people are struggling to pay their bills, we know that a lot of people haven’t turned on the heating during the winter, it's actually really tough and it's one of the reasons why we've really wanted to actually deliver a payment to students.
“Thankfully, the university has been so helpful and the joint work that we delivered helped us pay students £170 directly in their bank accounts to be able to kind of deal with all of that specifically during the winter, so hopefully that helped a lot of people in paying their bills,” she said.
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