The JS Group is today releasing the UK’s first ever analysis on how students are spending the cash that they receive from bursaries, scholarships, hardship funds and other such specialist investments through their universities.

Hundreds of millions of pounds are devoted each year to supporting students who are in need of supplementary funds to enable them to cope, progress and thrive through their higher education experience.

The JS Group is now able to track the specific spending patterns associated with the use of cash being drawn down by students from these funds.

The Shining the light on student financial support report has identified these trends through the Group’s dedicated partnerships with UK universities and via its own unique management and delivery of such funding through its Aspire Cash service for these universities.

The analysis covers the latest full academic year (2022 to 2023) and draws on data from 53,049 students (across different universities) in receipt of a total of £19.1-million of cash.

The JS Group will now be able to provide valuable insight to the UK higher education sector as it uses this first report as an initial benchmark for tracking comparative investment and spending habits on a rolling annual basis. As new partner universities benefit from the JS Group over time then this nationally significant data will be further expanded and enriched.

This first ever report has identified:

• The use of 134 types of specialist cash-based funding streams by UK universities (when it comes to investing in students who need particular additional funding support) – with an average of 12 streams being deployed by each individual university.
• An overall average of £360 being awarded to each student for the year.
• A total of 118,429 episodes of cash withdrawals – indicating that, across the year, each relevant student is drawing their cash entitlement in two instalments.
• That a collective 63% of the specialist cash funding is being spent on “cost of living” needs – such as household bills (over £4-million or 25% of the total), food and other groceries (£3.7-million or 22%) and rent (£2.8-million or 16%). With further amounts covering: learning or course-related resources (£1.9-million or 11%), transport to and from university (£1.5-million or 9%), and personal wellbeing/health support (£951,000 or 5%).
• Sizeable levels of cash are also being devoted to support students with their course placements (for example: nursing students attending hospitals) at a total amount of £788,000 – and also with their childcare costs (£435,000).

In addition, the report notes differences in cash spending and use of cash between students based at universities across six main regions:

• Those in the South East of England are allocated the highest level of cash (at £744 per student) compared with West Midlands based students (at £150 per student).
• Students at universities in the North East of England and the South East of England are devoting the highest levels of cash (at an average of 29% of their total specialist funding budgets) to paying off household bills.
• Students in Wales have the highest proportion of cash being spent on rent (at 33% this is double the sector average).
• Those in the West Midlands are spending double the average amount (17% of their total funds) on transport.

Interestingly, there are also records of cash being spent by students on: care home fees for relatives, starting up their own business alongside their studies, and paying off overdrafts or other debts.