Students ditch alcohol for hummus-making in sober freshers’ week

Sticky nightclub floors, flaming sambucas, a kebab and a hangover – this is the characteristic Freshers Week experience.

But students heading to university for the first time this week are increasingly turning their backs on alcohol-fuelled nights out.

“Sober freshers” posters for those starting university this month are advertising hummus societies, sober spa evenings and macrame craft nights.

The University of Bristol’s student union is holding 101 teetotal events for its new cohort of students, including drum and bass boxing and meditation classes.

University of Manchester’s sober students are being encouraged to choose from alcohol-free options including beatboxing classes and technical theatre training.

Meanwhile, the University of Edinburgh has ditched freshers terminology altogether, instead advertising its “Welcome Week” schedule – including yoga classes and screenings of Disney films.

Growing numbers of young people in the UK are staying off alcohol, according to the latest annual survey published last October by Drinkaware, the charity which aims to reduce alcohol-related harm.

The survey found that 21 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds do not drink at all, up from 14 per cent in 2017. The proportion of teetotal Gen Z-ers was higher than in any other age group, with just 13 per cent of over-25s saying they do not drink.

Meanwhile, young people who do consume alcohol are still binge drinking – but less than they used to. Fewer than three-quarters of Gen Z-ers surveyed in 2023 reported binge drinking at least once in the past year, down from 82 per cent in 2017.

The University of Bradford this week became the latest to announce it is weaning itself off alcohol in response to shifting student habits. The university’s main student bar has gone dry. Instead of cheap pints and triple vodka shots, it now sells bubble teas, milkshakes, and smoothies.

Aleem Bashir, the head of Bradford’s student union, said that it was purely demand-led. At an awards ceremony last year, a pop-up bar selling alcohol failed to make the £500 bar tab, meaning the student union lost its deposit.

Mr Bashir said: “The drinking crowd are changing their habits. Students nowadays, they’ve got two or three part-time jobs – early shifts sometimes start at 6 or 7 o’clock. You can’t go to work hungover. You’re just not going to want to stay out late.”

He added recent cost pressures have been exacerbated by dwindling support for students following “a lot of cuts in the last 10, 15 years”.

This means besides the rising price of drinking – the average cost of a pint climbed to £4.56 in 2024, up from £3.03 a decade ago – students are increasingly having to take on work to subsidise university life.

More than half of UK university students now have part-time jobs during term time, according to a survey published in June by the Higher Education Policy Institute.

The poll of 10,000 full-time undergraduates found that 56 per cent had paid employment while studying last year, spending nearly two days a week in jobs. It marks a sharp increase from 34 per cent in 2021.

The Government is understood to be poised to reinstate maintenance grants – a form of means-tested support for the poorest students that was abolished under Lord David Cameron’s leadership in 2016.

That may cushion the blow of any rise in tuition fees, which have remained frozen at £9,250 since 2017, after trebling to £9,000 in 2012.

For those without extra support, university is likely to be more of a financial headache than it once was, with students also grappling with soaring rental costs and decades of graduate debt.

It means young people who aren’t put off starting a degree altogether may be inclined to take university more seriously once they’re there, according to Mr Bashir.
 
He said: “Ten years ago, there was a bit of a carefree attitude about university, whereas now the demands for students are so high – they need to be getting a good degree, looking at their next direction of travel, and they’re aware that it’s a competitive graduate market.”

Growing dependence on international students has also meant a greater mixing pot of religions and cultures, many of whom are teetotal.

Around 48 per cent of all students at British universities described themselves as religious last year, compared to 39 per cent who reported having no religion, according to the Higher Education Statistics Authority.

Christianity is the most common faith – making up 27 per cent of all students, while Muslim students made up 11 per cent.

There’s also the health element. Gen Z-ers have spent much of their youth online, where social media apps are packed with influencers promoting healthy lifestyles based on exercise and diet.

It helps that no- or low-alcohol drinks have also gone mainstream, with once-watery cans of lager elbowed off the shelves in favour of sober offerings from premium brands like BrewDog, the UK’s biggest craft brewer.

According to TikToker Elysia Sanders, a third-year student at Durham University who completed her second year sober, the main barrier for many who want to stop drinking is simply the taboo attached.

“There’s an alcohol culture. You have to figure out whether it’s the alcohol or the culture that you don’t like,” she said in a recent video.

“We’re definitely not in a world yet where people who don’t drink are treated exactly the same as people that do… But people that occasionally make weird comments are probably the people that are the most insecure in their own alcohol consumption.”