The affordability of university in capital cities is often discussed in the context of whether students these days can afford to move out of home while they study.

“If Issy’s so poor why doesn’t she just move back in with her parents?” fourth-year University of New South Wales student Isabella Lowe recalls one ‘rich’ student asking.

Living rent-free is a luxury not all university students enjoy. Plenty of students live in a perpetually precarious financial state while they study, and before you ask if I'm exaggerating, consider Lowe's story.

“Last year for 3 weeks I had 58c to my name,” she says. “I was waiting on a fair bit of money for work I had invoiced but both contractors were really slow to pay.”

While she waited to be paid she barely ate and relied on friends who occasionally fed her dinner.

“I had some rice and tuna in the cupboard which I lived on but I couldn’t afford food,” Lowe explains. “Some of my friends offered to help, they would invite me over for dinner and eventually one forced me to take $40 from him so I could pay my $15 gas bill that my housemate was hounding me for and put some petrol in my car.”

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She couldn’t make a payment on the interest-free laptop loan she had obtained the year earlier when her computer of six years died, but fortunately the university was accommodating. Cameron Faricy, an educational support adviser at UNSW, redrafted the terms of her contract and gave her $90 in Coles vouchers.

The relief when she was finally paid was overwhelming.

“I could live again!” she recalls, before adding that she paid back her friend immediately.

These are the gritty details of a university student’s existence in 2018 and it sheds important perspective on just how difficult it is to access university without any financial support from family.

Lowe was homeless between June to September last year. “I gave up my share house because it was way too expensive. The winter holidays were coming up so I thought I’d go away, go camping for a bit and stop paying rent for a while.”

Getting back into a share house proved more difficult than she imagined and a string of bad luck meant she was without her own room for several months. She slept variously on people’s couches, in a hammock, in a youth hostel before getting a cheap room in a house in Alexandria in September.

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Her situation isn’t uncommon but Lowe says some of her university peers find it unfathomable. “The rich kids I know are all from private-schools so their friends are all the same, their parents help them and they see their situation as the norm.”

Plenty of university students know the norm is very different. One friend of Lowe’s commutes three hours each way to university four days a week because living on the Central Coast means he can avoid the "crazy" cost of living in Sydney.

Another worked for a full year, full-time, before starting university so she could have a financial buffer, and chose to study medicine in Tasmania because it offers the cheapest cost of living.

Lowe moved straight to Sydney after finishing high school in Darwin. “I wanted a top university so that I would be employable and UNSW was the only one that offered a combined commerce/design degree,” she says.

Because of various difficult living arrangements throughout high school, coming from a regional area and not having any financial support from her parents, Lowe was awarded an Access-Assist scholarship by UNSW. It is an equity-based scholarship that provides $10,000 a year for each year of her degree but, to date, that money that has been covering Lowe’s HECS fees. She is looking to switch to a weekly stipend.

The scholarship and the laptop loan are two practical ways Lowe says UNSW support financially disadvantaged students.

Another is that UNSW is among 30 organisations that have collectively introducedmore than 500 practical actions to enable people who are struggling to make ends meet to take control to improve their lives through financial inclusion.

UNSW is the only top-eight university committed to the Financial Inclusion Action Plan program, led by not-for-profit community organisation Good Shepherd Microfinance, on behalf of the Australian government, in partnership with the Centre for Social Impact and EY.

“More than two thirds of Australian university students are anxious about their financial situation, which can have a very serious impact on their success,” says Professor Eileen Baldry, the deputy vice-chancellor of inclusion and diversity at UNSW .

The university's FIAP, developed after extensive consultation with students, includes increasing the number of scholarships for disadvantaged students, expanding the university’s no interest loan scheme and developing a financially inclusive residential strategy.

“It reflects UNSW’s desire to enhance everyone’s experience and address financial barriers to education and economic inclusion while at university and beyond,” Baldry says.

Lowe knows firsthand how difficult those barriers really are and is heartened by the institution’s recognition and commitment to removing them.

“It shows they actually are thinking about financial equity for students and making changes to improve it,” Lowe says.

Without an explicit strategy for financial inclusion, Lowe could not have accessed the tertiary education that will, in all likelihood, give her the means to establish financial security and independence in the future.

But even with financial aid her student life is tougher than many could handle. How many students do you know who could maintain a double degree, work 20 hours a week while also juggling being homeless and destitute?

Georgina Dent is a journalist, editor and TV commentator with a keen focus on women's empowerment and gender equality.