Although the page on Covid-19 has finally been turned (or almost) for students in France, this does not mean that they are doing well. This is essentially what the latest note from the Observatory of Student Life, published at the beginning of September, explains. Entitled “The crisis in the rearview mirror?”, it takes up part of the results of its “Student living conditions” survey conducted in 2023 among 260,000 young people.
“The health crisis played a role in revealing the living conditions of students, which were severely disrupted for many months. But it ultimately did not transform them in the long term.”summarizes Fanny Bugeja-Bloch, sociologist and president of the scientific college of the Observatory. This is also the case for the economic precariousness of students, which is returning more or less to pre-crisis levels, with 26% of students reporting significant or very significant difficulties, compared to 23% in 2016.
“The stability of the phenomenon shows that this precariousness is therefore structural, comments the researcher. The students who are the most vulnerable are always the same ones… First of all, there are students of foreign nationality, but also scholarship students, as well as those who work alongside their studies for whom “the scholarship or income from work are generally insufficient to cover [tous] the needs », explain the authors of the study.
Poor housing conditions
It should be noted that after experiencing a sharp drop during the health crisis, the percentage of students with a job has returned to and even exceeded its pre-Covid-19 level (44% of them are working in 2023, compared to 40% previously). The study shows that students who do not live with their parents are also more affected by precariousness. However, parental cohabitation, which research shows “offers protection against precariousness”, and which had exploded during the crisis, now only concerns a third of the student population (as in 2016).
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The study points out that, given the lack of university accommodation (only 7% of students live in a Crous residence), there is a massive recourse to private housing. Among the main difficulties encountered by students using this sector are the “cost of housing”THE “lack of space” and the “unsanitary problems” ; so many degraded housing conditions likely to have an effect on their academic success.
“There remains the area of health where the effects of the crisis are still perceptible”notes Fanny Bugeja-Bloch. While 30% of students showed signs of psychological distress before the crisis, this rate rose to 43% in 2021 under the impact of successive lockdowns and school closures. In 2023, 36% are still in this situation. This fragility once again concerns the most disadvantaged students, those of foreign nationality, but also women more than men.
