UCL, where Mariam says she spends much of her days waiting around due to her home being more than an hour away. Photograph: Benjamin John/Alamy View image in fullscreen UCL, where Mariam says she spends much of her days waiting around due to her home being more than an hour away. Photograph: Benjamin John/Alamy Universities ‘I’m missing out’: the cash-strapped UK university students forced to live at home Experts say students from poorer backgrounds increasingly having to limit their options because of money worries
Amelia Hill Sat 27 Jun 2026 14.00 CEST Last modified on Sat 27 Jun 2026 14.01 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google Most days, Mariam spends hours simply waiting.
The 19-year-old University College London student often finishes her lectures by mid-morning but has careers events or society meetings in the evening. The three-hour round trip to her family home means travelling back and forth makes little sense, so she waits on campus instead. More often than not, by the time the event starts, she is too exhausted to stay long.
Living at home because she cannot afford London’s rents, Mariam says she is “definitely suffering from not having the best social life”. “But living at home will also affect my future because I’m missing out on those career opportunities – the spontaneous, after-work coffees, introductions and events – that those who live out take for granted,” she adds.
Mariam – not her real name – is part of a growing group of students living at home rather than moving away to university. A report published this week found that 52% of prospective undergraduates from England’s poorest neighbourhoods expect to live at home while studying, compared with 18% from the least deprived areas.
The Resolution Foundation, which published the figures in its annual intergenerational audit, said rising rents and living costs were increasingly shaping university choices.
View image in fullscreen James Davies believes living at home works in his favour because he doesn’t have to work to pay rent. Photograph: Supplied For some students, staying at home has its positives. Unlike Mariam, James Davies, an undergraduate at the University of Leicester, believes living at home works in his favour because he doesn’t have to work to pay rent. “I don’t think I’ve sacrificed too much. The people I know who moved away for university needed to do paid work outside of lectures and so didn’t have time to study.”
David Willetts, the president of the Resolution Foundation, said that where students chose to live could shape not just their university experience but the opportunities and networks that influenced the rest of their lives. “Our report shows that living with parents emerges from financial constraints rather than being a free choice, evenly spread across the income distribution,” he said.
Carl Cullinane, the director of research and policy at the Sutton Trust, said: “Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are increasingly having to limit their options for higher education studies because of worries about costs.”
Research from the Centre for Longitudinal Studies supports this conclusion, showing 37% of prospective students planning to live at home express a preference for a Russell Group university, compared with 56% of those planning to move away.
“Is going to a local university better than not going to university at all? Yes,” Cullinane said. “But is it optimal to go to a local university because you can’t afford to go to an…