Ensuring equality and inclusion for our commuter students

66% of students at CCCU are commuter students – ‘students who continue to live at home whilst studying, rather than moving into student accommodation’ (Kenyon, 2024). Nationally, around half of all students in higher education are commuters. This proportion is likely to continue to grow, as students react to the cost of living crisis and as a result of HE recruitment practices.

Evidence suggests that commuter students face multiple barriers to equality in learning, because they have to travel to campus to access their learning, resources and other support services. This has been recognised by the Office for Students, which added commuter students as a group at risk of inequality and exclusion in 2024.

This workshop will briefly outline the challenges experienced by commuter students, presenting both national and CCCU-specific evidence, before introducing evidence-based changes that we can make, at the institutional and individual levels, to diversify our pedagogy, policy and practice.

Participants will leave the workshop with an understanding of how they can adapt to support our commuters.

The workshop will be facilitated by Dr Susan Kenyon, Principal Lecturer in Politics and co-coordinator of the Wonkhe series on commuter students, available via: https://wonkhe.com/tag/commuter-students/.