Students, attitude types and financial circumstances

• Summary
• Introduction
• The analysis
• Three distinct groups
• Personal characteristics vary by group
• Financial position also varied
• 'Be Betters' report more financial hardship
• What does this analysis tell us about students?
• References and notes

Summary

Will Smith from the Institute for Employment Studies reports on additional analysis of the national Student Income and Expenditure Survey 2004/05, which was featured earlier in the Autumn 2006 issue of Graduate Market Trends [1]. The latest analysis focused on final year students from England and explored a typology of students’ attitudes towards higher education and the graduate labour market and looked at how these relate to students’ personal characteristics and finances. The study shows that three distinct patterns of attitudes could be distinguished amongst the cohort and that these attitudes tended to reflect students’ backgrounds and financial situations.

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Introduction

The Student Income and Expenditure Survey (SIES) 2004/05 was undertaken jointly by the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) [2]. Commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the National Assembly for Wales (NAW) the study was designed to explore student finances in detail along with financial wellbeing, and attitudes towards higher education and the graduate labour market. The survey involved face-to-face interviews with a random sample of over 3,700 full and part-time students from 88 higher and further education institutions in England and Wales.

The current work focuses on 813 final year full-time students of English domicile and utilises data collected on students’ attitudes to higher education and the graduate labour market along with self-report data on their current financial situation and well being. The analysis focussed on this cohort in order to minimise potential differences arising from changes in the student support system over time and to be able to look at expected debt upon leaving university. Also, it was decided to exclude part-time students as it was felt that their higher education experiences and financial circumstances would be very different to those of full-time students.

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The analysis

Cluster analysis was used to explore if there were any identifiable patterns (or typologies) of students’ attitudes towards higher education and the graduate labour market and if so, how these relate to other factors such as students’ personal characteristics, their finances, and their financial wellbeing.

The data entered into the cluster analysis comprised students’ responses to items from the attitudes section of the survey where respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with a number of statements using a five-point Likert scale. The statements used were:

• ‘My course is equipping me for the demands of working life’
• ‘I nearly did not come to university because I was concerned about the debts I would build up’
• ‘I am worried that the growing number of graduates will make it hard for me to get a graduate job’
• ‘I think that I will earn more as a result of being in Higher Education’
• ‘Most of the people I know go to or have gone to university’
• ‘I think that in the long term the benefits of Higher Education are greater than the costs’.

Cluster analysis was then used to explore whether there were any clusters (or groups) of students that held distinct patterns of attitudes across these six items. In this procedure each individual’s responses on the six items are compared using a measure of similarity (or dissimilarity) and then grouped together according to the level of similarity or dissimilarity they have with other individuals. If any distinct patterns of responses emerge then the analysis will result in a solution with a number of clusters, each of which contains individuals whose responses across the items measured are similar. Alternatively, it is possible that no distinct cluster will be found and all individuals' responses vary along a continuum [3].

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Three distinct groups

In this case the cluster analysis showed that students could be clustered into three groups based on three distinct patterns of responses to the attitudinal statements. Students within each of these groups can be seen as having a similar pattern of responses to other students within their group, but a different pattern of responses to students within each of the other two groups. Analysis of variance on each of the six attitudinal items suggested that there were significant differences between the average scores of each of the three groups on all six items. Table 1 shows the typical responses to each of the attitudinal statements by students in each of the three groups.

Comparing the characteristic differences between these scores for each group a typology of attitudes can be uncovered, and patterns emerge that typify students’ attitudes in each group. The three groups can be seen as:

• Group 1 (‘Go Getters’) - This group was generally positive about higher education, unconcerned about the possibility of debt and confident about their future prospects, and for this reason they have been termed ‘Go Getters’.
• Group 2 (‘Get Setters’) - This group had mixed feelings about higher education. On the one hand they are still positive about higher education and were not so concerned about debt when starting their course, but on the other hand they have some concerns about their future prospects. This group, therefore, have been termed the ‘Get Setters’.
• Group 3 (‘Be Betters’) - This group was more reserved about their higher education experience. Although they still tended to think that they will earn more as a result of studying at university and that the benefits of higher education outweigh the costs, they tended to be concerned about their debt and their prospects in the labour market and were less likely to state that most people they know have been to university. This group have been termed ‘Be Betters’.

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Personal characteristics vary by group

Group membership was found to be significantly associated with a range of personal characteristics, including age, subject studied, socioeconomic class, and whether or not their parents had studied at higher education.

• ‘Go Getters’ - This group was predominantly made up of young students with over half (56%) under 20 years of age and only 22% aged 25 or older (see Table 2). Medics made up a big part of this group with students studying medicine or subjects allied to medicine (eg nursing, medical physics, etc.) making up nearly a third. They also tended to be fairly traditional students in the sense that the majority reported that at least one of their parents had been to university (60%) and most were from managerial/professional backgrounds (59%).
• ‘Get Setters’ - This group was almost exclusively made up of younger students with nearly two-thirds aged under 20 (61%) and only seven per cent aged 25 or over. The majority were studying humanities, arts and social sciences subjects (61%). Again, students in this group tended to be from higher socio-economic backgrounds, with 54% being from a managerial/professional background and only 20% being from a routine/manual occupations background. Over half (53%) had at least one parent who had studied at higher education level.
• ‘Be Betters’ - Students in this last group were much more likely to be older than in the other two groups with nearly a third aged 25 and over (32%), and only 30% under 20 years of age. Again, this group was largely made up of students studying arts, humanities and social science subjects (53%). This group had the highest proportion of students from a routine/manual socio-economic background (34%), and 62% of students in this group had no parental experience of higher education.

These profiles show how the ‘Go Getter’ and ‘Get Setter’ groups might be seen as more traditional students, in that they are both predominantly made up of young students, students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, and were more likely to have had parents who had been to university. The main difference between the two groups was related to subject, with a higher proportion of ‘Go Getters’ studying medicine or subjects allied to medicine, which might go some way to explaining why this group tended to be less worried about their future job prospects. The ‘Be Better’ group tend to be less traditional students, in that there is a higher incidence of older students, students from lower socioeconomic classes, and with no immediate family background of higher education study.

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Financial position also varied

Using the data from SIES it is also possible to explore the financial circumstances (income [4], expenditure [5], and debt [6]) of students in each of the three attitudinal groups.

• ‘Go Getters’ had the highest total income (although not significantly higher) at £8,585 on average (see Figure 1). Compared with the other groups ‘Go Getters’ had less income from the main sources of higher education student support (£2,562, or 30% of total income), but significantly more (£1,441 or 17%) from targeted higher education student support, which includes NHS bursaries and reflects the subject bias of the group. The total average expenditure for this group was the lowest out of the three groups although, at £9,904, this was only marginally lower than found for the ‘Get Setters’ (see Figure 2).

Source: NatCen IES, SIES 2004/05

Source: NatCen IES, SIES 2004/05

• ‘Get Setters’ had the lowest average total income at £7,849. However, this group saw the highest contributions from family and friends (£2,365 or 30% of total income). Spending on participation costs was significantly lower for this group than in the ‘Be Better’ group at £1,891. This was mainly due to relatively lower spending on travel and on course-related childcare.
• ‘Be Betters’ had a mean total income of £8,058 and compared with the other groups had significantly less income from family and friends (just £987, or 12% of total income). However, this group was significantly more likely to get income from benefits than the other groups, alhough benefits only accounted for 6% of income amongst this group. Average total expenditure was also significantly higher for this group at £11,212 compared with the other two groups, with higher average living costs of £6,191. This difference in living costs was primarily due to higher spending on food and personal spending (including telephone costs and other personal items). The ‘Be Betters’ also had significantly higher levels of expected debt upon leaving higher education at £9,651, with the highest level of estimated borrowing and significantly lower levels of anticipated end-of-year savings (see Table 3).

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'Be Betters' report more financial hardship

As well as being asked about their income and expenditure, students in SIES were also asked a series of questions about perceived financial hardship. When comparing the three groups on their responses to these questions we can see that the ‘Be Betters’ were significantly more likely to report financial hardship (see Table 4). Students in this group were twice as likely to indicate that they had thought of dropping out of university due to financial difficulties, and that financial difficulties had affected their studies, and they were much more likely to indicate that they had a little or a lot less money than they need. They were also significantly more likely to have gone into arrears on at least one of a number of payments [7] and to have gone without or cut down on at least one of either food, heating, or prescriptions/medicines.

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What does this analysis tell us about students?

The analysis shows that students should not be seen as a homogenous group who share the same concerns and attitudes regarding higher education and the graduate labour market, and that in the 2004/05 student cohort, at least, three distinct patterns of attitudes towards higher education can be distinguished. Firstly, there are the ‘Go Getters’ who are positive about higher education and their future prospects. This group tend to be a young, perhaps focused, group of students, from traditional higher education backgrounds who know what advantages their course will bring them in the graduate labour market. Secondly, there are the ‘Get Setters’ who, also, tend to be young and from a more traditional higher education background, and again are generally positive about higher education, but who are perhaps less sure about what their future holds for them in terms of the graduate labour market. Finally, there are the ‘Be Betters’ who although they tend to see the benefits of higher education are more concerned about the financial costs of their education and are unsure about their future prospects. This group tends to be made up of less traditional students, who have less financial support from their families and friends and who face a tougher time financially while in higher education, and report higher levels of financial difficulty.

The analysis would indicate that potential higher education entrants of a similar background and attitude to the ‘Be Betters’ are likely to be most at risk of being put off by the financial costs of a higher education, and will be the toughest to convince about the benefits of higher education. However, it should be noted that the cohort under investigation in this report will have started their education prior to changes in the education funding system that have been brought in by the DfES in recent years to address these types of concerns. Research of this kind with future cohorts is essential to explore the persistence of these types of perceptions of higher education or whether changes in the student financial system have helped in addressing concerns about the financial costs of a higher education.

References and notes

1. ‘Exploring student finances’, Emma Pollard, Institute for Employment Studies, Graduate Market Trends, Autumn 2006.

2. Finch S, Jones A, Parfrement J, Cebulla A, Connor H, Hillage J, Pollard E, Tyers C, Hunt W, Loukas G (2006), Student Income and Expenditure Survey 2004/05, Department for Education and Skills (DfES) research Report 725.

3. For more on cluster analysis see for example ‘Hair, J.F., Jr., W.C. Black, B. Babin, R. Anderson, and R. Tatham, (2006) Multivariate Data Analysis, (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall’.

4. Income can come from a number of sources and is split into a number of main categories: main sources of student support (including student loans, fee support, and Access to Learning Funds), targeted student support (including child-related support, NHS bursaries), contributions from family and friends, money from paid work, social security benefits, and a miscellaneous other category.

5. Expenditure is categorised into: living (including food, personal spending, and entertainment), housing (inc. rent, household bills), participation (including books, course-related travel and childcare), and spending on children.

6. ‘Debt’ was estimated by subtracting estimated end-of-year savings from estimated end-of-year borrowing.

7. Payments included: rent, utility bills (gas, electricity, water), hire purchase agreements, mortgage, council tax, credit cards, mail order payments, telephone bills, tuition fees, childcare payments, TV licence, child support or maintenance, miscellaneous other category.

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