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Last week’s A-level results saw the number of students accepted into university increase yet again and new research shows they will probably be studying a good hour and a half’s drive from home.
Survey data from 1,000 students collected by Education Phase on behalf of BBC TV Licensing shows that those studying at university have moved an average of 91 miles from home.
Just under 30% of students travelled at least 100 miles to study, excluding the 11% that came from outside the UK.
There were also some people who said they had travelled extreme distances for their academic pursuit: 1% of students moved somewhere between 500 and 700 miles from home, with a couple of students going the whole 700.
For reference, that’s roughly the driving distance from central Cornwall to the University of the Highlands and the Islands in Inverness.
Male students were more likely to travel further away with their universities an average 98 miles from home compared to 85 miles for female students.
There’s also a split when it comes to the different grouping of university.
For example, those studying at the elite Russell Group institutions are likely to have travelled smaller distances than those at other universities founded before 1992. However, post-1992 universities had the shortest mean distance travelled at 67.8 miles.
Why do students travel away from home for university?
Almost a quarter, 73% said that they had based their decision to move away from home on the fact that they wanted to study at a certain institution.
However, it was not all about the academic location - 60% said the desire to live in another town or city was one of the driving factors in them moving away from home.
Russell Group students were the most likely at 84% to say they had moved to join the university of their choice, with only 1% saying it was because they had been offered a place through clearing.
One in ten students generally said they chose their university based on receiving a place through the clearing system.
Love does not seem to be a big driver in these young people’s lives with only 2% going to the university because it was the same one their boyfriend or girlfriend went to. That proportion was the same across both genders.
While just 6% of students said that they chose their university because it was close to home that did not mean that people did not stay local anyway.
Almost a third of students in London (31%) were men and women who already lived locally, which was the highest proportion of any UK region.
Welsh students are the least likely to stay within their own region with just 14% of those studying in Wales being resident there before.
This goes some way to explain why those attending Welsh universities have on average travelled further than students anywhere else in the UK.
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