The problem of poverty amongst tertiary students: Why it is missing from the policy agenda

Abstract In this article two questions arc addressed. The first is whether there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate there is a significant experience of poverty amongst university students. The second question is, if student poverty is a significant problem, then why hasn't it become an issue to which government officials and people outside government pay serious attention? The article is confined to an exploration of two factors that appear influential. The first relates to the minimal political efficacy of students, which I suggest is linked to their general social status and to popular narratives that tertiary students are a privileged group. This also reinforces the widely held belief that student poverty is a positive ‘character building’ experience for young people. The second factor which helps explain the omission of tertiary student poverty from the policy agenda concerns the absence of ethnographic information on tertiary student poverty.