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Students spending less on alcohol

A survey has shown that first-year students in the UK are going out and drinking less frequently than finalists, and that student spending on alcohol has decreased overall.

The survey, conducted by student finance website Save the Student, reported that freshers are going out an average of 1.23 days a week compared to the finalist average of 1.57. Across all years, an average of £19 a week was spent drinking whilst out, in comparison with the average of £28 found last year by the NUS. The decrease in spending is believed to be linked to the increase in tuition fees to a maximum of £9,000, which came into effect at the start of this academic year.

Owen Burek, Editor-in-Chief of Save the Student, said, “I would think that the fall in spending this year is a kind of a knee-jerk reaction to the tuition fees trebling and the wide media coverage which came with this over the summer, which probably frightened quite a number of first-years into watching their spending. Some students may choose to forgo a night out to save money but in the main we believe students are turning to cheaper ways of drinking, such as the pre-drinking method.”

The website’s report on the survey further indicated that the fee rise may have prompted students to consider the quality of their university education, stating, “The fact that the fees have risen may have caused more students to think carefully about how much time they spend studying compared with going out drinking.”

LMH Welfare rep Georgia Luscombe shared this opinion, telling Cherwell, “Perhaps higher tuition fees are making people compromise and they have less money to spend on social activities if they’re prioritising a better education.”

Nevertheless, she did not report seeing a decrease in freshers drinking at LMH, and opined, “If anything, I think a rise in tuition fees will make the kind of people coming to £9,000-a-year universities like Oxford more likely to have disposable income, as people with more limited resources might be forced to go to a less expensive university.”

“I know a lot of them are very aware that they don’t have to pay back fees until after they have jobs.” However, she also noted, “At Keble we have had far fewer alcohol-related deanings. In fact, we had none in Michaelmas. I know that they were at least 3 alcohol-related deanings across Michaelmas-Hilary last year [all three incidental incidents involving freshers] and there haven’t been any this year.”

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