Note: this is the original report. Versions in circulation to Schools exclude the ‘suggested leaders’ column in section 11. The online questionnaire is omitted.

Exploring the experience of University of Plymouth home-based students

Professor PaulineKneale,

Dr Rebecca Turner,

Jane Collings,

Dr Oliver Webb

Dr Karen Treasure

PedRIO - Teaching and Learning Support

Contents

1.Summary

2.Project aims

Section 1 Experience Elsewhere

3.Literature Review

4.UK HEI support for local and commuting students

5.The Student Engagement Partnership Report Recommendations

Section 2 The University of Plymouth position

6.Defining the home-based population

7.University of Plymouth student numbers

8.Analysis of student attainment data

9.Student Voices

Themes emerging from the focus groups

Section 3 Conclusions and opportunities for further work

10.Conclusions from the literature

11.Draft Recommendations for development

Further considerations

Section 4 Resources

12.References

13.Draft Home-based student survey

NB: most readers will not need to print Section 13. (p29-49)

1.Summary

Since the introduction of student fees the number of students choosing to stay at home while studying is increasing(Artess,et al. 2014). The needs and performance of these home-based students, those who do not move away from home for HE study,has been the focus of a number of recent studies, and some UK universities are developing and implementing support mechanisms specifically for these students. Home-based students are generally less likely to achieve a first class or upper second class degree, with younger students more at risk of lower grades (Artess et al., 2014), suggesting we should explore experience and attainment of Plymouth’s home-based students. Tackling the issue of underperformance amongst undergraduates, where the students involved are not easily identified, is difficult for module staff. In any module there are students who perform below their potential. However, the national data suggests there is a gap in attainment for these students, which is effectively invisible to teaching staff,which we should seek to address.

This paper reports a preliminary investigation into the experience of University of Plymouth students, and collates examples of activities and interventions that can support the experience of home-based students. The aim is to:

  • Capture information about the numbers of home-based students in each of the Schools,and their academic performance (section 7);
  • Provide preliminary results from focus groups with current second year students (section 9);
  • Present a literature review which highlights some of the issues which may be relevant for Plymouth students (section 3);
  • Collate examples of measures which other universities are putting in place to support their students (section 4); and
  • Highlight the recommendations from The Student Engagement Partnership Report (Thomas & Jones, 2017).

This report would clearly benefit from an in-depth study with University of Plymouth students, staff and UPSU, but that will take time and resources. In the interim, it provides evidence to suggest there are actions which can be taken forward which would benefit our students, based on research elsewhere, particularly from the University of Glasgow where 40% of students are home-based(Browitt and Croll 2015). Suggestions are made for further research, through for example the survey instrument developed for this purpose (section 13)..

On the basis of this preliminary research, the literature and experience of other universities. This report makes some suggestions for raising awareness of the needs of students who live at home during their studies. (section 11 )

Need a very short cut? ….. See Table 1 (p13), and sections 8 and 11.

2.Project aims

This study aims to provide the basis for developing recommendations and the foundation for further research to:

  • Capture contemporary information of ‘who’ are our living at home students, including gaining detail on their distribution across Faculties and Schools;
  • Explore the academic and social integration of living at home students, considering specifically their interaction with the University campus, resources and activities, teaching and learning and their achievements;
  • Identify additional support and space needs for students commuting daily from across the south west;
  • Ascertain how programme organisation and timetabling can improve the experience of our living at home and commuting students;
  • Identify initiatives that other HEIs have implemented to increase stay at home and commuter student engagement.

Methodology: This study involved:

1)To provide context for this study a literature review (section 3) and desk based-research of HEIs that have implemented initiatives for home-based students (section 4) was undertaken.

2)A review of institutional data available through CIS to identify any attainment gap between home-based students and other student groups, which took into account other important moderating factors (i.e. socio-economic status, ethnicity, age, gender, disability, entry qualifications, discipline and tariff points)(section 8).

3)Focus groups were held with second year students to explore their experiences of HE as living at home-based, their experience of teaching and learning and engagement with enhancement activities. (section 9)

4)A questionnaire has been developed for implementation with undergraduate students from across the whole University (section 13) if it is decided to take this research further. Some of the questions may provide useful prompts for programme staff in discussion with their own students.

Section 1 Experience Elsewhere

3.Literature Review

Traditionally, undergraduate students have been perceived as young people who leave the parental home, moving away to live communally with their peers throughout their studies. Increasingly, however, this is not the case. Recent research shows that 25-30% of the UK student body is made up of students who have either remained in the parental home or who have continued to live in their existing accommodation (Artess, McCulloch et al. 2014). This number is predicted to rise to 50% by 2020 (Taylor 2011, Wojtas 2014).

The trend to studying from home is not limited to the UK. It is often related to the increasing financial burden associated with HE (Khambhaita and Bhopal 2015), with 78% of students who live in their parental home citing financial reasons as the main motivation for this choice (Patiniotis 2005). In the US, where significant financial costs have a longer history,this trend was identified as early as the mid-1990s: ‘The majority of college students today commute to campus’(Horn and Berktold 1998). Consequently the US literature is more prolific than from the UK, providing helpful insights into a variety of parallel and different issues.

Residence in university-based accommodation has historically been associated with the process of maturation and was framed by concepts of institutional responsibility towards the care of students, but is now more associated with notions of independence and freedom (NUS 2015). Recent research in the UK has highlighted the extent to which students who do not live in student-centred accommodation during their studies are an extremely diverse group. They include mature students; students with caring responsibilities; students with lower UCAS tariff scores or non-standard entry qualifications; students whose parents work in routine or semi-routine occupations; those with no prior family experience of HE; and students at lower entry tariff institutions (Artess, McCulloch et al. 2014). These students have been shown to be motivated far more by the extrinsic value of HE, the significance of gaining a qualification and how this will lead to future employment, rather than the intrinsic value more generally associated with the significance of being a student (Artess, et al. 2014).

However, making reference to these home-based students as a single group is misleading, and the definition used in different studies compounds difficulties in making comparisons. Student self-define in different ways, adding to complexity. For example, Thomas and Jones (2017) refer to commuter students in their report, and define them as ‘those who travel to their HE provider from their parental or family home, which they lived at prior to entering HE’, but students who live in the immediate vicinity of their University may not relate to the notion of commuting at all. Helsen(2013) points out that, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, a commuter is defined as ‘a person who travels some distance to work on a regular basis’ (Stevenson and Waite 2011), making this a problematic terminology to refer to the groups of students concerned. Students who live within city boundaries will have different issues to those who commute for between two and five hours each day to attend the University.

This point is particularly significant for regional HE institutions such as the University of Plymouth, where a relatively high proportion of this group of these students are drawn from within the city limits (over 1000) and nearly 3000 commute. Institutional literature may refer to both ‘local and commuting students’(University of York 2017). These terminologies are important because, while the University of Glasgow refers to ‘local’ and ‘commuter’ students’, activities associated with these students are referred to as ‘local student events’ thus eliminating all reference to commuting (Browitt and Croll 2015) and thereby perhaps alienating some of the targeted students. The University of Manchester aims to support ‘living at home students’ through an ‘Off-campus students project’, which incorporates ‘living at home students, mature students, student parents and student carers’ (University of Manchester Students' Union 2017). Pokorny, Holley et al. A2017) use the term ‘stayeducation’ to describe all students who reside at home, but this means a loss of the divisions in the group. Other authors have variously referred to ‘day students’(Christie 2005) or ‘living at home students’(Artess, McCulloch et al. 2014). Care is therefore needed in comparing findings between studies as ‘differing approaches introduce potential difficulties in comparing research findings…each study may examine groups that differ to greater or lesser degrees’ (NUS 2015:17).

While accepting that a definitive nomenclature is not available, the literature consistently acknowledges that awareness of the needs of the students and efforts to provide support is limited in HE institutions (NUS 2015), and evidence for performance and influences are contested. Widening participation initiatives have increased the intake of students from non-traditional backgrounds and many of these students choose to stay at home, so their educational attainment will depend upon not only attending university but also of effectively navigating the challenges facing home-based students and transitioning to employment in the long term. While some studies have shown that commuting can lead to lower levels of retention and attainment, for example in nursing in the US (Dante, Fabris et al. 2013), studies from the UK have stated that ‘the association of poor outcomes and living at home mainly reflects the pre-existing characteristics of respondents who stay at home, rather than disadvantages they experience as a result of living at home while studying’ (Artess, et al. 2014:11). More general and recent evidence from the US has also found that ‘after controlling for student and institution characteristics….student residence has an inconsequential effect’ in terms of attainment (Graham, Hurtado et al. 2016). The NUS (2015) report recommends that UK teaching institutions devote time and attention to develop additional support for home and commuter students.

Capturing attainment data for this group has some difficulties. Recent studies indicate that evaluations of performance should take account of the age profile of students. While students who stay at home were found overall to be less likely to achieve a first class or upper second class degree, this difference was not present for mature students (Artess, et al. 2014). Age of entry to HE has been shown generally to have an insignificant effect on attainment overall (Blasko 2002), but the fact that the vast majority of mature students, either stay at home or commute (Artess, et al. 2014:9) means that broader discussions of the dynamics in this group are applicable when considering the impact of living arrangements. This is particularly important given that mature students have higher rates of non-completion (Higher Education Statistics Agency 2007), indicating that they already require additional focused support. Furthermore, graduate employment outcomes have been shown by some to be far more significantly affected by living at home for younger rather than for mature students (Purcell 2012), despite the fact that employment outcomes even for mature students have been shown to be linked to levels of engagement with university-based extra-curricular activities (Stuart, Lido et al. 2011). While it could therefore be argued that outcomes for this group could be improved if greater engagement in the wider student experience was facilitated, it is significant that mature students often place value on the maintenance of home-based responsibilities and life patterns. This is what Christie et al.(2005) have referred to as ‘separate worlds’ as opposed to the ‘absorbed worlds’ often preferred by their younger, university-centred counterparts. A distinction between the impact of living at home for mature students and younger ones is thus present in many forms, and suggests that age is one of the key variables in determining the services and support systems required by home-based students.

Some issues identified in the literature are found to affect most students who do not fit the stereo-typical view of what and who a student is. Many of these students report a sense of ‘othering’, as the nature of their experience of HE is not reflected in institutional discourses, where there are often assumptions of youthfulness, social engagements and wider forms of participation which ignore the reality of tiring and often expensive commuting as well as a lack of broader engagement (Thomas and Jones 2017). Wider forms of student engagement are shown to be reduced for home-based students (Kuh, Gonyea et al. 2001). This is significant as research has shown that feelings of isolation, ‘not fitting in’ or being less engaged with peers and institutional activities are amongst the primary reasons for students considering leaving their studies prior to completion (Thomas 2012:12). Students who are unable to identify a common perception of ‘habitus’ are likely to feel that their social or cultural patterns are inappropriate, or that their tacit knowledge is undervalued, and are therefore more inclined to withdraw early (Thomas 2002). Ensuring that a good platform for belonging is provided for students who stay in their own homes throughout their studies is thus central to student retention and success.

The notion of belonging in educational environments can be viewed from at least two angles, one relating to psychology and the other to a sociological background. Firstly, there is a subjective, individual need to feel a sense of belonging, to be accepted by peers and to feel connected to the social environment or milieu (Goodenow 1993a, 1993b, Vallerand 1997). Secondly, a sense of belonging is associated with structural and social understandings, such as Bourdieu and Passeron’s notions of cultural capital (1977), which are understood to be formed by socialisation and are thus often related to ideas about class in society. Alternatively, a sense of belonging as a student is often related to Tinto’s conceptions of academic and social engagement (1975). In the context of widening participation and the changing social backgrounds of students, [including those who choose to live at home] additional attention needs to be paid to ensure that all students feel connected with their peers and institution, and are able to relate to the HE experience.

Student sense of belonging is thus related both to recognition of academic capacity and the extent of participation in university-linked extra-curricular activities. While stay at home students are known to participate in extra-curricular activities at a lower rate than their peers, they are also known to continue to participate in such activities linked to their home environment (Stuart, Lido et al. 2011). Students who possess significant qualifications and life experience already, may be ‘seemingly unaware of the advantages of…..[extra-curricular] …engagement to their implicitly and explicitly cited goals of achieving the qualification and securing enhanced employment outcomes’ (Thomas and Jones 2017:7). A small but rich study, based on in-depth interviews with a few home-based students, has concluded that: ‘Everything they experience is coloured by the life they lived before, and which they continue to return to at the end of each day’ and thus emphasises the implications of existing social relationships in building a new sense of belonging as a student (Pokorny, Holley et al. 2017). Extra-curricular activities (ECA) are associated with three separate theoretical frameworks, as identified by Seow and Pan (2014:364):

‘First, the zero-sum framework posited that ECA participation has a negative effect on academic performance because students were devoting more time for their ECA activities at the expense of their academic studies.

Second, the developmental framework theorized that ECA participation has a positive effect on academic performance indirectly as a result of the non-academic and social benefits associated with ECA participation.

Last, the threshold framework hypothesized that ECA participation has a positive effect on academic performance up to a certain point beyond which participation leads to negative academic outcomes.’

This demonstrates that a range of outcomes are associated with these activities, and it may be considered that where stay at home or commuting students sustain social activities associated with their non-academic life setting, they may derive the benefits of the ‘developmental framework’ described above without engaging in university based extra-curricular activities. This said, the impact of such externally based experiences is likely to be very different in terms of its contribution to a sense of belonging to an individual’s HE experience.

Students who already live in the locality of their chosen institution may face specific challenges in nurturing a sense of belonging as a student. For example, studies have shown that these students may experience a crisis of identity and find themselves feeling isolated, given the widespread assumption of mutual exclusivity between ‘students’ and ‘locals’ in the cities where HE institutions operate (Holdsworth 2009). An emerging literature highlights the disruption to identities that can occur where a student sense of belonging is being cultivated in a place which is already memory-laden: ‘the action of ‘going to university’ was attached to a period of intense readjustment as they [live at home students] began to re-imagine familiar ‘non-student’ spaces differently as students’(Holton 2015:823). In many cases, it is identified that ‘local’ students make a conscious decision early in their studies not to fit in or participate in student-centric activities (Patiniotis 2005), even developing a ‘stay at home’ strategy (Clayton, Crozier et al. 2009) in order to minimise risks associated with stereo-typical lifestyle choices.