Student Housing and Households

Abstract

Despite undergraduate students being a captive audience for academic researchers, it is somewhat ironic that the day-to-day experiences of students outside of the lecture room are largely overlooked within the sociology of youth. In a long overdue volume dedicated to the study of student life, Silver and Silver (1997) reflect on ‘how little research exists on students as “real people”’ (p. 2). This silence, they argue, results from the influence of policy demands, funding pressures and the growing need for institutional accountability. Education and policy researchers, while focusing on student recruitment, learning, attainment and attrition, have thus largely neglected to study student life outside of the learning environment. Indeed, reflecting on the influential Dearing Report (1997), Barnet (1998) notes a continuing ‘lack of any serious discussion of… students and what it is to be a student’ (p. 17). Most research on housing choices, household formation patterns and transitions to adulthood (within both housing studies and the sociology of youth) has equally failed to consider the experiences of undergraduate students, other than to highlight the growing importance of student accommodation as a first destination on leaving home. The reasons for this specific neglect are somewhat different to those highlighted by Silver and Silver (1997) and will be briefly considered below.