Evaluating the impact of higher education funding aimed to address student hardship: Survey findings

This report explores the findings of an evaluation conducted at Sheffield Hallam University to understand the impact of institutional financial support provided to students who are under-represented in higher education or who are facing hardship. This evaluation implemented the validated financial support evaluation toolkit, which is recommended by the Office for Students, as the framework for this data collection and analysis (McCaig et al., 2016). The survey tool, which was used in this current phase of the evaluation, contains closed and open-ended questions that explore what the funding has enabled its recipients to do and what might have not been possible otherwise. A total of 5,302 students received financial support from the University in 2020/21 and 347 of these responded to the survey, which is a response rate of 7%. The survey findings highlighted how respondents used other financial sources, aside from the hardship funding, to pay for their higher education, such as loans, overdrafts, earnings from work and money from friends or family. Without the financial support, its recipients reported that they would not only find it difficult to access the essential provisions of teaching and learning but also to be able to pay for basic living costs. Other key benefits reported by respondents were that the financial support enabled them to: concentrate on their university work, with the money helping many to pay for devices and IT equipment: continue with their studies; ease their anxieties and support their mental health. However, it is important to note that the low response rate limits the generalisations that can be made from the survey respondents to the wider population.