Students from across the United Kingdom received their exam results recently and will be either planning ahead to university or turning to plan B.

Whilst that’s interesting, what is particularly interesting is the attitude of students when they arrive at university.  In previous generations, students would perhaps place social activities on a par with academic ones (if not higher), but recent studies suggest that this is slowly changing.

Growing work ethic

With student debts at record levels, it is perhaps not surprising that students are taking a slightly more serious approach to their time at university, but it’s still interesting to see just how that’s manifesting itself.

For instance, a recent survey by the university housing provider Chapter revealed that when given the choice between a party and a networking event, 80% of respondents voted for the latter.

To help cater for this, the company is running Kickstart London, an event for student entrepreneurs from institutions across the capital, but I do wonder if we’re scratching the surface of what could be possible to help support students who wish to create their own startup (or otherwise take a professional approach to university life).

(Un)affordable living

Living in London is well known to be horrendously expensive, and there are a number of ventures designed to provide relatively affordable spaces to people who are entrepreneurially minded.

For instance, the Old Oak is a facility developed by The Collective, which offers a so called co-living space.  The facility offers 12,000 square feet of shared living space in a vast abandoned office space that has been converted into what the company are calling a co-living space.

Or you have the Fish Island Village, which is a project being developed by Peabody & The Trampery. It offers entrepreneurs a space to both work and live. The facility, which is being developed in Hackney Wick, will offer residents shared facilities and a range of support services to help grow their business.

It’s a project that had the full support of (then) Mayor Boris Johnson.

“This partnership is a shining example of what can be done to support the needs of our creative and tech talent,” he said this summer. “This scheme truly rethinks the concept of how people live and work and could be replicated both in London, and other major cities across the UK.”

Suffice to say, few of these facilities are geared specifically towards students, and there seems at the moment a divide between places marketed to students, and those marketed to freelancers, start-ups and the like.

With more and more students looking to setup their own business, either whilst at university or when they graduate, perhaps this is a market that is ripe for development, especially as students appear to be thinking more seriously about post-graduation.

The opportunity to live and mingle with entrepreneurs may be an attractive one therefore for just such forward thinking students.