Students miss extracurricular opportunities when access feels unclear
Updated Aug 19, 2026
A university can invest in extracurricular opportunities and still leave most students outside them. Rick Hayman, Angela Hibbs, Eleanor Graham, Geovanny Lagunas, Josh Adams and Remco Polman's new Journal of Further and Higher Education paper, "Engagement with extra-curricular activities at a post-92 United Kingdom university: experiences of sport, applied science and psychology undergraduates", shows why. Only 14% of the 552 students surveyed had formally applied for an available opportunity, even though many recognised their relevance and remained engaged with their studies. For UK universities using student voice to understand participation, the finding shifts attention from student motivation to the clarity, timing, and accessibility of the opportunity itself.
Context and research question
Universities promote placements, paid internships, ambassador roles, study abroad, inclusion projects, and careers programmes because these experiences can support confidence, belonging, skills, and graduate outcomes. Yet take-up often depends on students finding the right opportunity, understanding what it involves, and having enough time and money to participate. Previous research on why students miss employability support points to the same practical problem: an opportunity can be valuable in principle and still feel irrelevant, badly timed, or too difficult to enter.
The authors asked two questions: how aware were students of the extracurricular activities available at their university, and what encouraged or restricted participation? They surveyed 552 undergraduates across 12 sport science, applied science, and psychology programmes at one English post-92 university. Most questions were closed, supplemented by three short-answer prompts about relevance, desired schemes, and students' experiences of applying or taking part. The team used descriptive statistics and chi-square tests to compare awareness and barriers by programme and level of study.
This was a socially inclusive institution where around 80% of undergraduates had at least one widening participation characteristic. The sample itself was narrower: 89% of respondents were white, 86% were aged 18 to 21, and 60% studied sport science. Those boundaries matter, but the research question transfers directly to UK institutions trying to understand why well-funded opportunities do not reach the students expected to benefit from them.
Key findings
Academic engagement did not translate into extracurricular participation. Sixty-nine per cent of respondents said they attended all taught sessions, while only 14% had formally applied for an extracurricular opportunity. Almost half, 46%, described the activities as relevant or very relevant. Low take-up therefore did not simply identify a disengaged group. It exposed a gap between taking part in a degree and navigating the wider university offer.
Awareness was broad but uneven. Study abroad was known to 84% of respondents and year-long placements to 72%, but awareness differed significantly by programme and level of study for several schemes. Students most often heard about opportunities through email, cited by 54%, followed by academic staff at 42%, word of mouth at 34%, and posters at 14%. For institutional teams, the lesson is not merely to communicate more. It is to check whether the right information reaches each cohort early enough to be useful.
The clearest barriers were uncertainty about the scheme and its application process. Lack of knowledge about an opportunity varied significantly by year of study, with the pattern especially pronounced among students at Levels 3 and 4. Timing also differed by level, while programme-level differences appeared around career relevance and existing work commitments. These results echo evidence that internships can build employability confidence while social class still shapes who feels ready. An advertised opportunity is not equally accessible when its purpose, process, or likely return remains hard to judge.
A poor application experience could damage future participation. Short-answer responses included positive descriptions such as enjoyable and beneficial, but students also described difficult placement processes and rejection. One respondent reported receiving no acknowledgement after submitting a CV. Another response captured the personal cost:
"unsuccessful and it knocked their confidence to apply again"
That comment matters because low participation can begin before an activity starts. If an application disappears into silence or rejection feels unexplained, the process may teach students not to try the next opportunity.
Time pressure reflected students' circumstances, not a lack of ambition. Sixty-nine per cent of respondents had paid work outside their studies, and 36% worked more than ten hours a week. Students also mentioned timing, unpaid opportunities, career relevance, and a desire to focus on their degree. The paper is careful not to frame widening participation students as lacking motivation. Participation depended on the interaction between available time, accessible information, perceived value, and the design of the opportunity.
Practical implications
First, universities should diagnose low take-up before launching another promotion campaign. Combine participation data with an open question such as, "What made this opportunity easier or harder to consider?" Then compare the answers by programme and year, because the paper shows that barriers do not distribute evenly. This turns a participation rate into a diagnosis that teams can act on.
Second, institutions should treat the application journey as part of the student experience. State the expected role, time commitment, costs, selection criteria, and application steps in one place. Acknowledge every application and explain what happens next, including where students can get help after an unsuccessful attempt. This gives students a usable route into the opportunity and protects confidence when the outcome is competitive.
Third, teams should design around students' real allocation of time and money. Paid work, commuting, caring responsibilities, assessment peaks, and travel can all make an otherwise attractive activity impractical. Recent OfS research on commuter students and journey time reinforces why broad labels can hide very different constraints. Testing timing, payment, duration, and delivery with the intended cohort helps universities remove avoidable barriers without misreading constrained participation as apathy.
Finally, universities should analyse the explanation alongside the headline rate. Student Voice Analytics can group open comments about awareness, relevance, application friction, workload, and cost, then compare those patterns across courses and student groups. Used alongside take-up data, this can show whether a university has one communication problem or several distinct access problems. That gives Careers, Student Experience, and widening participation teams a clearer basis for deciding what to change first.
FAQ
Q: How can a university apply these findings to its own extracurricular offer?
A: Map one opportunity from first promotion to final outcome, then ask students at each stage what was clear, what felt risky, and what prevented progress. Review awareness, application, completion, and open comments by programme and year rather than relying on an institution-wide average. Start with the scheme showing the largest gap between stated relevance and actual take-up, because that gap is most likely to reveal fixable friction.
Q: What are the main methodological limits of the study?
A: The survey covered one English post-92 university and three disciplinary areas, with a sample concentrated among younger, white, sport science students. Most items were closed, some allowed multiple responses, and the findings show associations rather than causal effects. UK universities should use the study as a framework for local investigation, not assume its percentages are sector benchmarks.
Q: What does this paper change about student voice and engagement?
A: It shows why participation data needs explanation. A low rate can reflect unclear information, weak application support, paid work, timing, cost, or limited perceived relevance, and each cause requires a different response. Student voice becomes more useful when universities pair behaviour with students' own accounts and use structured open-text analysis to distinguish the barriers behind the number.
References
[Paper Source]: Rick Hayman, Angela Hibbs, Eleanor Graham, Geovanny Lagunas, Josh Adams and Remco Polman "Engagement with extra-curricular activities at a post-92 United Kingdom university: experiences of sport, applied science and psychology undergraduates" DOI: 10.1080/0309877x.2026.2720473
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