Covid-19 effects on the student population.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 in the UK, students have been left out of government support campaigns for the public. Those that lost jobs, had rent to pay and a student loans that often didn’t cover their rent payments. Since students cannot claim universal credit as suggested for the rest of the UK population when they lost their jobs they were left in debt to their landlords. Students sought support from the government but instead students were left unconsidered and unheard.

Many seem to believe that students had their loans and that’ll will cover them. This is simply not the case for the average student, the Maintenance Loan works out as £223 less than their monthly living costs (savethestudent.org, 2020). Meaning that when many students lost their jobs due to the pandemic or were forced out of accommodation that they still had to pay for, many were left out of pocket with no where to turn. Despite the current government funding of universities, there as been no direct help to students meaning that whether or not they can afford to survive has been dependant on the generosity of universities or their parents. Considering that unemployment is at it’s highest in the last 5 years the ability of parents to help their children financially is also considerably lower than ever.

Sadly students, have spent this pandemic being hit from left to right with a lack of financial support in so many directions, from having to pay for accommodation they can’t live in to losing their jobs with no extra support. This is why UniRaffle CIC (uniraffle.co.uk) was created to crowd fund from students and other members of the public. Thus creating a fund that students could continually ask for access to when they come on hard times, known as the UniRaffle Hardship Fund.

The main concept being that as students have lacked financial support for a long duration in the pandemic that we should start supporting each other if every student could take part and contribute just a £1 we could potentially reach millions of pounds to give back to the students that truly need it the most.

If this not-for-profit was successful the continuous funding that could be given to students could prevent the 36% of students that consider dropping out because of money problems (savethestudent.org, 2020) from doing so.

https://www.savethestudent.org/money/student-money-survey-2020.html#finance