Insights and trends on the usage of financial support paid to 163,000 students via Aspire
The 23/24 academic year has been one of significant upheaval for the UK’s higher education sector and we are still coping with the unprecedented headwinds facing university finances despite the announcement from the Education Secretary on lifting the cap on tuition fees to £9,535 for the 25/26 year.
Equally, the financial pressures on students themselves have never been so challenging. Coping with the ‘cost of living’ crisis, an increase in part-time working, a rise in commuter students, and the accompanying challenges on retention, progression and continuation – these are all now embedded features of university life.
There is little (if any) national-level evidence on how bursaries and scholarships impact universities and their students but through JS Group’s data-driven expertise drawing on our unique Aspire partnership platform we are able to identify patterns that all HEIs can learn from.
This report draws on specific evidence from 163,000 students who have benefitted from £40m of specialist funding from our 30+ university partners over the last academic year. We’ve also captured more than 4,000 student user opinions through our own student feedback report.
We aim to encourage all universities to explore these insights into the levels of investment our partners have made, the speed of delivery of funds to the student, the timings of fund use, and how students use those funds.
