The social mobility index, university by university
HEPI and London South Bank University have published the English Higher Education Social Mobility Index for 2025, ranking institutions by how many disadvantaged students they admit and how well those students do afterwards. It is a different list from every prestige ranking, and it is the one that answers the question a first-in-family applicant is actually asking. The class divide at university covers the experience behind the data.
“Money is taboo”: the sacrifices students do not talk about
Exeter students describe what the cost of living means in practice — meals skipped, heating off, societies dropped, and a reluctance to say any of it out loud in a city where plenty of students are not struggling. The silence is the part worth noticing: hardship funds go unclaimed partly because applying means admitting it. Budgeting covers asking for help early.
Student activities are sold as employability, and carry real risk
A warning that the expeditions, events and volunteering trips universities promote as employability development often run without the risk assessment culture that would apply to staff doing the same thing. If you are organising a society trip, the union’s risk assessment process is not bureaucracy — it is what stands between a committee member and personal liability.