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Rethinking the Student Experience?
2025-04-28
By Dr Yunyan Li and Dr Talitha Brown, Centre for Hate Studies, University of Leicester with the support of the Institute for Policy, University of Leicester
Rethinking the Student Experience: Insights from 2025 Wonkhe Conference
In March 2025 Wonkhe held its flagship conference in London, entitled ‘The Secret Life of Students’. Within the context of an evolving educational landscape, the event examined the complex range of challenges that students face today and sought to re-imagine a fresh vision for student experience which can meet every student’s distinct needs and future potential. The Institute for Policy invited Dr Yunyan Li and Dr Talitha Brown, Postdoctoral Research Associates at the Centre for Hate Studies, to attend the event and to share their reflections on the day’s key themes and talking points.
The Myth of the “Fully Available” Student
In the opening keynote, Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe, challenged how universities and the public position ‘the student’ as elite, lazy or reckless. This prejudicial view of students downplays their contributions to their local communities and to society. Moreover, by holding on to the notion of the ‘full-time student’, who focuses exclusively on their academic commitments, many universities ignore the specific challenges that working and commuter students, in particular, experience today. The time-poverty and economic insecurity of the 77% of students who work during the term-time are systematically overlooked, despite the fact that 65% of all students who work over 15 hours a week are more likely to consider dropping out. Such statistics raise an important, and yet uncomfortable, question: are universities equipped to support the students who have to navigate today’s rapidly shifting economic conditions or do they only cater to their own idealised, and often flawed notions of what it means to be a student?
The precarious position of international students is also often not fully recognised, even at a time when the international student population has grown substantially in many UK universities. At the conference, Sanam Arora, Founder and Chairperson of the National Indian Students and Alumni Union UK, emphasised that safety concerns have led the Office for Students to classify international students as vulnerable. According to Arora, many international students feel trapped in a system where honest feedback about recruitment agents or university experiences could jeopardise their visa status. The housing crisis, furthermore, compounds any of the challenges that they experience, affecting not just their living conditions but also their integration into their neighbourhoods and the broader university community. The systemic vulnerability of international students was poignantly illustrated by Mihita Parekh, Education Officer at Middlesex Students’ Union, who observed that “inclusivity is often promised in universities but not practised”.
Beyond “Town vs. Gown”: Students as community members
Speakers at the conference challenged the misconception that students are transient visitors to the towns and cities of their university and argued that they should be treated as legitimate community members and contributors. Susan Kenyon and Joel Dowson emphasised that students are routinely ‘othered’ in urban policy despite their significant economic and cultural contributions to cities. They questioned the persistent ‘town versus gown’ dichotomy and argued that students’ experiences are fundamentally geographical, occurring in accommodations, on public transport, in GP surgeries, in workplaces, and voting booths.
Students should be treated as integral community members deserving of services rather than mere temporary visitors. Examples of how SUs and Student Assemblies are working towards making their city more student friendly reinforces this principle. Greater Manchester’s student partnership with the mayor’s office, for instance, aims to improve transport, health, and housing for students. This partnership is based on the premise that integrating students into city planning can transform the urban experience for students. The Greater Manchester Student Assembly further contributed to the ‘Good Landlord Charter’, which exemplifies how cities can better accommodate student needs and recognise them as essential stakeholders, rather than temporary outsiders. These illustrations of good practice and the reconceptualisation of the students as an urban citizen and community member represents a fundamental shift in how we understand the student experience beyond campus boundaries.
The Power Paradox of Student Representation
A critical theme of the conference was the disconnect between HEIs’ rhetorical commitment to student voice and the limited actual power that students wield in institutional decision-making. Indeed, while students are increasingly pressured to provide feedback, they receive little meaningful decision-making authority. A number of student representative speakers described feeling like they were “in the wrong room”—attending meetings where actual decisions aren’t being made. As noted by Darcie Jones, Education Officer at the University of Plymouth Students’ Union, student representatives are often expected to “be bold” despite being the only people in the room not being paid to be there. The power asymmetry that this creates undermines an authentic partnership. Meaningful representation requires not just presence but compensation, whether financial or through academic credit.
Reflections
The conference pulled some of the pressing challenges facing students into focus. It emphasised that universities need to critically examine their assumptions about who their students are and what they need. With 72% of English universities projected to face deficits and diminishing international enrolment due to visa restrictions, a greater emphasis has been placed on attracting students to campuses and demonstrating measurable value through enhanced student experiences that meet student expectations. There is also an urgent need to reimagine, reflect and redesign our educational structures to accommodate the economic and social realities that students face. Student representation should move beyond merely collecting student feedback to embedding students in genuine decision-making processes with meaningful power and support. As the sector navigates an uncertain future, centring these realities provides better paths forward: not just for improving metrics but for truly supporting students as they are, and not as convention imagines them to be.