Tackling sexual misconduct in universities and colleges

Read the Insight brief online

• Introduction
• What is sexual misconduct?
• What the OfS has done
• Prevalence and reporting
• The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
• The impact on students
• The background to change
• How universities and colleges are taking action
• Conclusion

Introduction

Students should be able to participate in all activities connected with universities and colleges, whether for learning, residential, leisure or social purposes, without fear of being subjected to sexual harassment, violence or abuse.¹ The Office for Students (OfS) works with universities and colleges towards this end and in collaboration with other key stakeholders, including organisations representing and working with victim-survivors. Our strategy for 2022 to 2025 includes the goal that universities and colleges 'act to prevent harassment and sexual misconduct and respond effectively if incidents do occur.'²

As part of our wider work on harassment and sexual misconduct, we published a statement of expectations in April 2021, now accompanied by a student guide.³ This sets out recommendations for preventing and addressing harassment and sexual misconduct affecting students in higher education. We have commissioned an independent evaluation of the impact of the statement of expectations, which is published alongside this Insight brief.⁴ We have recently announced plans to consult on introducing a condition of registration in this area, which would enable us to intervene where universities do not comply. We will also develop our own prevalence survey to establish the scale of the problem of sexual misconduct in higher education.

This brief has a more specific remit than the statement of expectations; here we are presenting a discussion of the evidence on sexual misconduct in higher education. We explore what constitutes sexual misconduct, including the legal background; its prevalence and impact in universities and colleges; and work to achieve comprehensive change across the higher education sector's systems, processes and culture.

What is sexual misconduct?

The OfS defines sexual misconduct as all unwanted conduct of a sexual nature. Students can be subjected to sexual misconduct from other students, staff, or visitors (authorised or otherwise) to university or college settings. The perpetrator may be a stranger, or someone they are acquainted with or know (including another student, a member of university or college staff, or a former or current intimate partner). The misconduct can occur through any medium (including online) and in any setting relating to the student experience (including learning, social, leisure, and residential spaces).

Sexual harassment, violence and abuse are wider social issues, not unique to students’ experience at university or college. They often have at their core the manipulation of a power imbalance, such as the asymmetry of relationships between students and academic staff.⁹

Several pieces of legislation make sexual misconduct unlawful. These include the following:

• Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (amended by the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, section 111), which criminalises stalking.¹⁰
• Sexual Offences Act 2003, which criminalises sexual assault and rape.¹¹
• Equality Act 2010, which prohibits sexual harassment, and also makes it unlawful to treat someone less favourably because they submit to or reject sexual harassment.¹²
• Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, which prohibits distributing private and personal explicit images or video footage of an individual without their consent.¹³

In addition, most universities and colleges are public bodies, and as such need to comply with the public sector equality duty. A public body must have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010, and to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.¹⁴

What the OfS has done

The £4.7 million provided by our Catalyst Student Safeguarding programme has funded 119 projects to address safeguarding issues affecting higher education students, including sexual misconduct. The resulting resources and case studies are freely available on our website to assist universities and colleges in their own work to prevent and address sexual misconduct.¹⁵

In 2021, we published the Office for Students’ statement of expectations for preventing and addressing harassment and sexual misconduct affecting students in higher education.¹⁶ This sets out, under seven main headings, recommendations for preventing and addressing harassment and sexual misconduct affecting students in higher education. It aims to support universities and colleges to develop and implement effective systems, policies and processes in this area.

SUMS Consulting has independently evaluated the initial impact of the statement of expectations. The report and learning digests are published alongside this Insight brief. The report shows that improvements have been made, but that this progress is uneven and slow. It also suggests that students themselves are not feeling the impact of these changes.¹⁷ It seems likely that self-regulation has not delivered the change students need.

We therefore plan to consult on introducing a new condition of registration that would require universities and college to take steps to prevent harassment and sexual misconduct, and to address incidents effectively where they occur.¹⁸

Prevalence and reporting

The prevalence of sexual misconduct is difficult to calculate accurately. These are often hidden crimes or incidents: victim-survivors frequently face barriers to disclosing their experiences to any third party, or reporting them to the police or other authority. In higher education contexts, social and institutional pressures may discourage students from making incidents known and seeking to have them addressed. Many still lack information about what to do if an incident occurs, fear that they won’t be taken seriously, or find reporting it a stressful experience with an unsatisfactory outcome.

The best data currently available on prevalence comes from statistics and estimates from representative, national surveys that do not rely on police reports for their findings. These include the Crime Survey for England and Wales, a household survey run by the Office for National Statistics. This includes a self-completion module (not involving talking to an interviewer) for sensitive topics, to encourage disclosure. While this survey offers the best available data on prevalence for sexual offences and domestic abuse, it does not focus specifically on students. Indeed, the fact that it does not cover people living in group residences, including student halls of residence, is a limitation when examining the experiences of students.

Data from the crime survey reveals the extent of underreporting to the police:

• Fewer than one in six victim-survivors have reported sexual assault to the police. Among those who had told someone but did not report it to the police, the most common reasons given were embarrassment, not thinking that the police could help, thinking that it would be humiliating, and thinking the police would not believe them.²⁰
• Only 17.3 per cent of victim-survivors of partner abuse had told the police about the abuse.²¹

Results from some studies with self-selecting participants also suggest that many students do not report or disclose sexual misconduct to their university or college.²² One study found that most of the current or former students responding to a survey had either told no-one about experiencing sexual misconduct, or had disclosed it only to people outside their university (70 per cent of respondents, or 61 students).

Common reasons for not disclosing were believing that no action would be taken, perceiving the issue as not sufficiently serious, not knowing who to tell, or fearing they would themselves be blamed.²³ Another study found that fewer than one in ten respondents who experienced sexual misconduct from staff had reported this to their university or college. The most common reason for not reporting was uncertainty over whether the behaviour was sufficiently serious to warrant reporting.²⁴

Crime survey statistics show that full-time students are more likely to have experienced sexual assault in the previous year than people in any other occupation type (8.0 per cent of students, based on combined data from the three years to March 2020).

The differences in prevalence by occupation type are also likely to be linked to the age of the victim-survivor. Men and women in the 16 to 18 and 20 to 24 age groups were significantly more likely to have experienced sexual assault in the last year than those in any other.²⁵ Although students can be any age, the majority are younger people: 70.3 per cent of full-time undergraduate entrants in 2020-21 were under 21 and 18.4 per cent were aged from 21 to 30.²⁶

Women in all occupation types are more likely to have experienced sexual assault in the previous year than men, but the difference was greatest among full-time students (11.6 per cent of female students, compared with 4.2 per cent of male students).²⁷ There is no published data from the crime survey on the sex of perpetrators, so we must rely on evidence from the criminal justice system (which will not show the whole picture, because incidents are underreported). This shows that men make up 97.9 per cent of defendants in rape prosecutions and 97.2 per cent of defendants in prosecutions for other sexual offences.²⁸

According to crime survey data, 7.7 per cent of full-time students experienced domestic abuse in the previous year. As with sexual assault findings, the difference between male and female experiences is marked: 10.5 per cent of female full-time students had experienced domestic abuse in the last year, compared with 4.8 per cent of their male counterparts.²⁹

The Office for National Statistics does not publish specific data on disabled students’ experiences of sexual violence and domestic abuse or the experiences of students from different ethnic backgrounds. However, we know from crime survey data that in the population as a whole, disabled women were more likely to have experienced sexual assault in the last year (5.0 per cent) than women without a disability (2.8 per cent). There was no significant difference in the likelihood of men experiencing sexual assault based on whether or not they were disabled.³⁰

Crime survey findings also show that disabled people are more likely to have experienced domestic abuse than people without a disability (7.5 per cent of disabled men and 14.7 per cent of disabled women in the previous year, compared with 3.2 per cent of men and 6.0 per cent of women who were not disabled).³¹ Some disabled people are subjected to abuse by people who assume the role of their ‘carer’ and who they rely on for support in everyday activities.³²

According to the crime survey, in the population as a whole, people in the black or black British and mixed ethnic groups were significantly more likely than those in the white, Asian or other ethnic groups to have experienced sexual assault within the last year.³³ The mixed ethnic group appeared significantly more likely to have experienced domestic abuse than those in the black or Asian groups (though this is based on a relatively small number of respondents).³⁴ People from minority ethnic groups may face additional barriers when seeking support or trying to escape violence and abuse.³⁵

A recent Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (run by the Office for National Statistics) asked questions about perceptions of personal safety and experiences of harassment. Although its findings do not provide specific data on students, it contains important information on the extent of sexual harassment in society and, in particular, young women’s experiences of this:

• Women were more likely than men to report having experienced at least one form of harassment in the previous 12 months (27 per cent, compared with 16 per cent). (Figure 3 shows the types of harassment considered by the survey.)
• Experiences of catcalls, whistles, unwanted sexual comments or jokes were the most common form of harassment for women aged 16 to 34 years.
• 38 per cent of women aged 16 to 34 years had experienced catcalling in the last 12 months (this was the highest proportion of all age groups).³⁶

In an online survey conducted by the National Union of Students (NUS) and the 1752 Group, with self-selecting respondents who were current or former students, 41 per cent of survey respondents had had at least one experience of sexualised behaviour from staff, and a further 5 per cent knew of someone else experiencing this. 60.1 per cent of respondents who reported experiencing staff-student sexual misconduct stated that the perpetrator was male, and 13.5 per cent of respondents reported a female perpetrator. The report on the findings concluded that students with some characteristics (for instance relating to sex, sexual orientation or level of study) are disproportionately likely to experience sexual misconduct in higher education.³⁷ Another research report suggests that most staff members who engage in sexual misconduct may target more than one student.³⁸

Research studies with self-selecting respondents give useful views of the types of misconduct that occur and their effects, and national surveys are useful in comparing the incidence among full-time students, or individuals of typical student age, with those in other groups. However there is at present no national representative survey focused solely on higher education students’ experiences of sexual misconduct. The OfS intends to change this.

National prevalence surveys of students in this area are already in use in the USA, Australia and the Republic of Ireland.³⁹ The OfS has begun work to develop such a survey for use in England, to understand the scale and nature of sexual misconduct affecting higher education students at both national and institutional level. The survey will be anonymous and will ask about students' experiences of sexual misconduct, including incidents that have never been reported to the university or college or to the police. As well as establishing and monitoring its scale, the existence of the survey can help raise awareness of the problem and how individuals can be supported. We anticipate that a pilot survey will be run in 2022-23.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

Sexual and domestic abuse support organisations have reported increased demand for their services during the coronavirus pandemic. However, for some services this increased demand has fluctuated over time (for example, increases in calls during a lockdown or spikes in numbers of victim-survivors asking for help when lockdown measures were eased). Support organisations have also highlighted how perpetrators have exploited the pandemic and associated restrictions, and the more isolated circumstances of victim-survivors, to continue or increase their abusive behaviours.⁴⁰

Figure 1: Prevalence of sexual assault by occupational group

Source: Office for National Statistics, Crime Survey for England and Wales, years ending March 2018 to March 2020 combined. Population: 16 to 74-year-olds in England and Wales. Respondents were asked about experiences of sexual assault in the last year.⁴¹

Figure 2: Prevalence of domestic abuse by occupational group

Source: Office for National Statistics, Crime Survey for England and Wales, year ending March 2020. Population: 16 to 74-year-olds in England and Wales. Respondents were asked about experiences of domestic abuse in the last year.⁴²

Figure 3: Proportion of adults aged 16 to 34 years who experienced types of harassment

Source: Office for National Statistics, Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, 16 February to 13 March 2022. Respondents were asked about experiences of harassment in the last year.⁴³

The impact on students

Being subjected to sexual misconduct can have a significant detrimental effect on a student’s health, including their mental wellbeing, and on their sense of belonging at university or college. Some victim-survivors, because of the abuse, change their behaviours and lifestyles in ways that lead to hypervigilance, restricted freedom, and isolation. One study found that some students who had experienced harassment or sexual misconduct avoided certain places or routes and going outside at night. The study also found that many of these students avoided leaving their homes, where possible. This experience was particularly common among international students and female students.⁴⁴

The negative and sometimes long-lasting mental health effects of being subjected to domestic or sexual violence and abuse are well documented.⁴⁵ NUS’s ‘Hidden marks’ research adds to this body of evidence. It found that that mental ill health was a common consequence of female students’ experiences of violence, stalking and sexual assault, with students commonly reporting living in fear and with reduced levels of confidence.⁴⁶

Experiences of sexual misconduct can hinder academic progress and lead to disengagement from higher education activities (both educational and extracurricular). Some students consider leaving, or actually do leave, higher education altogether. NUS research has found that one in four victim-survivors of serious sexual assault reported that their studies had been affected by the experience.⁴⁷

The background to change

Several reports published in the 2010s and early 2020s have presented evidence about students’ experiences of sexual misconduct. These reports have highlighted the need for cultural change in higher education and accelerated progress in this area. This has occurred against a backdrop of high-profile national and international social movements such as #MeToo, Time’s Up, and the Everyday Sexism project.⁴⁸

The ‘Hidden marks’ report was the first nationwide report in the UK into female students’ experience of harassment, stalking, violence and sexual assault. In this and in subsequent reports and resources, NUS has drawn attention to the normalisation of a culture of sexism and sexual harassment on campus (so-called ‘lad culture’) and its negative effect on the safety of female students.⁴⁹

The 1752 Group developed from what is thought to be the first UK university conference on staff-to-student sexual harassment, held in 2015. The group campaigns and produces research on sexual harassment in higher education and calls for an evidence-based approach to addressing sexual misconduct.⁵⁰

The website Everyone’s Invited, founded in 2020, has also played a significant role in drawing attention to sexual misconduct in educational establishments at all levels. It offers a space for sharing accounts of sexual violence and abuse. Victim-survivors can submit testimonies of experiences in schools and universities, as well as other organisations.⁵¹

Universities UK established a taskforce in 2015 to examine evidence about violence against women, harassment and hate crime in general, and to make recommendations. The resulting report, ‘Changing the culture’, was published in 2016 and Universities UK subsequently published two follow-up reports on progress in this area.⁵² The reports called on universities to ‘lead the way’ in the work to prevent and address misconduct. The ‘Changing the culture strategic framework’ contains the following ‘strategic pillars’ to underpin cultural change in the higher education sector:

• a key role to be taken by the university’s senior leadership team
• the importance of a holistic institution-wide approach
• development of effective preventative strategies
• development of effective responsive strategies
• sharing good practice within institutions and with the sector at large.⁵³

The taskforce worked with Pinsent Masons LLP to produce new guidance for universities and colleges on how to handle student disciplinary issues where alleged misconduct may also constitute a criminal offence. This guidance includes specific recommendations in relation to sexual misconduct and gives examples of unacceptable behaviour and sanctions.⁵⁴

Universities UK has also worked with Against Violence and Abuse (AVA) and NUS on the ‘Combat Misconduct’ project, which included the production of a toolkit for vice-chancellors and principals with nine practical steps to take to tackle sexual misconduct in their universities and colleges.⁵⁵

How universities and colleges are taking action

In recent years, universities and colleges have been acting in response to the published research findings and online content on the problem of sexual misconduct in higher education. The initiatives taken by universities and colleges have included:

• improving or creating new reporting processes and support pathways for students
• providing training for staff, students and student leaders (for example, training on handling disclosure, on sexual consent, on bystander or third-party interventions)
• awareness-raising activities, such as running a sexual violence awareness week, producing posters, videos, website and mobile app content
• making links with local specialist support services.⁵⁹

Conclusion

There has recently been a greater focus on the prevalence and impact of sexual misconduct in higher education, with the publication of relevant research and personal testimonies shared online. Sexual misconduct should never be part of students’ higher education experience, but many are still being subjected to it during their time at university or college. Full-time students are more likely to have experienced sexual assault than people in any other occupation grouping. The impact of this can be devastating, including mental ill health, disrupted study and some students leaving higher education altogether.

The OfS continues to work with universities and colleges and other key stakeholders to address the issue, as part of a wider programme of work on preventing and addressing harassment. Work on improving equality of opportunity for students is a focus of our strategy for 2022 to 2025, and work to prevent sexual misconduct and respond effectively to any incidents is a key part of this.⁶³

The OfS's vision is of a higher education sector where preventing and addressing sexual misconduct are consistent priorities. Our planned consultation on a new condition of registration will refocus all universities and colleges on these important issues. Our work on a prevalence survey of sexual misconduct in higher education in England, the first in the UK, will allow the OfS, students, universities and colleges to understand the impact of the action that is taken.