Student nurses say they are sleeping in their cars, going to food banks and relying on lecturers to buy them food, only to struggle to secure jobs when they graduate.
The situation has been branded ‘disgusting’ by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).
The devastating testimony comes after hundreds of nursing students met to share experiences of severe financial hardship and uncertain employment at the RCN’s annual congress in Liverpool.
The RCN has written to health secretary Wes Streeting and education secretary Bridgette Phillipson calling for better financial support and a job guarantee for all new nursing graduates in England.
The decision to cut the nursing bursary is almost a decade-old. The reforms saw universal maintenance grants to support living costs removed, with students are now only able to apply for loans. Students have to pay tuition fees, which will rise to £9,535 in September 2025.
At an emotional meeting, Jess Dodds, a student from the West Midlands, said: “My first year, I was homeless. I moved from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne down to Staffordshire, so I had a week of sleeping in my car, just so I could attend university.”
Lisa, a student nurse from the North West and a single parent, said: “If I go on placement, which can be up to two hours away, that’s a 17 hour day. I have to decide whether to drive those two hours home or try and find the money to stay in a hotel overnight and leave my family at home.”
Students have even reported ill health from the severity of financial hardship.
Lottie, a final year adult nursing student in the South West of England, said: “Every day, I ask myself why I am going into nursing at all. A lot of us are debating if we are going to quit and it needs to change.
“I am exhausted and stressed on top of everything. The cost of living has gone up, but support hasn’t, and it does leave you struggling to find the money to pay simple bills, like rent, electricity and water. The combined stress of placements, study, work and worrying about how to make ends meet has caused me to have two major Asthma flareups.”
The student nurse crisis now sees university lecturers stepping in to provide food and even direct students towards food banks.
Annette Davies, a nurse and university lecturer, said: “I can’t believe I’m sending students lists of food banks where they can get food. I shouldn’t be doing that, that’s not right.”
“I have a colleague who the other week bought one of the students sandwiches. She had no food. She’s got a 14-year-old son at home. We gave her money out of our own pocket. We shouldn’t be doing that, but what else were we to do?”
In an RCN survey last year, seven in ten nursing students who were considering quitting gave financial difficulties as their reason, while an average of 21% of nursing students quit before graduating every year.
The applications to nursing courses in England have collapsed by 35% since 2021.
But despite the long hours needed to complete their courses and widespread staff shortages across the NHS and social care, some nursing students say they are struggling to find a job after they graduate.
Alex Knight, a final year student in Nottingham, said: “The reality is that I finish in two months and I cannot get a job. I've applied for more non-nursing jobs than I've applied for nursing jobs. I've applied to become a detective and my university has told us to look elsewhere outside of nursing because we cannot get jobs.”
He later said: “It’s a national funding crisis and responsibility lies firmly with central government. Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting, I need you to listen and listen up good. Use us or lose us, because we can’t afford to wait forever.”
One newly qualified nurse told the meeting there were only two jobs available in her local trust for a graduating cohort of 20, while a student at the meeting said there was only one job in her area to apply for and now faced moving in with her parents because she wasn’t earning.
Another nurse said her trust warned against recruiting too many students from the local area as it would be considered “over recruitment”.
She said: “This is our future. They need our support and it’s absolutely obscene that they are not given local jobs.”
According to a new RCN report into nurse education in England, the proportion of lecturers who think fewer students will get a job after graduation has doubled since last year [NOTE].
It follows a report by NHS Providers which showed two in five trusts could make cuts to clinical posts to balance the books, a situation the RCN says could make securing employment for students even harder.
Natasha Green, who studies Adult Nursing at the University of East Anglia and is Chair of the RCN Students Committee, said: “Student nurses committing their time and dedication to this essential profession should not need to visit food banks, request hardship funds or get themselves into credit card debt just to make ends meet.”
The College is calling on the government to introduce a package of reforms to support students and to protect the domestic pipeline of new nurses into the workforce.
This includes guaranteed jobs after graduation, universal maintenance grants that reflect the rising cost of living, tuition fee loan forgiveness for those who commit to working in the NHS and social care, and speeding up the travel and accommodation expenses system for nursing students.
It also comes as more than a thousand delegates vote in favour of a UK-wide review of nurse education and jobs for newly qualified nurses, at the RCN’s annual congress in Liverpool.
RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive Professor Nicola Ranger, said:
“The testimony from our nursing students struggling to feed themselves or put roofs over their heads is incredibly moving, but it also leaves me angry that they are put in this position in the first place.
“Your nurse education should be about fulfilling your potential, but instead many of our students are saddled with debt, whilst poor financial support drives them into poverty. To make matters worse, more and more say they are unable to secure a job when they qualify and at a time when there are widespread vacancies. It’s disgusting and a tragedy for patients.
“Ministers must listen to what the future of the workforce is telling them. That’s why I have written to the Secretaries of State for Health & Social Care and for Education to demand a ‘new deal’ for students. Without investment in nurse education, this government attempts to reform the NHS will fail every time.”
Ends
Notes to editors
According to surveys conducted in May 2024 and February 2025, the RCN asked nurse educators to what extent they expected final year students to gain employment with their local Trusts compared with previous years. In May 2024, 131 people (24% of respondents) answered “I expect fewer students than usual to gain employment with their local trusts”, compared with 241(50% of respondents).
