Young carers¡¯ relationship to equality is an inherently strained one. Used to putting their needs and dreams at the bottom of a long list of others¡¯ priorities, they struggle to compete on a level playing field with their peers in the classroom.

To be clear, this is never the fault of the cared-for person or their wider family; it is the fault of an underfunded social care system that fails to identify the hundreds of thousands of children and young people providing care to a loved one in the UK.

The Learning and Work Institute has found that young adult carers provide more than?. Meanwhile, a recent parliamentary found that, on average, young carers wait three years before receiving support from their local authorities or voluntary sector organisations (which emotional and practical support as well as advice and help with available benefits and education and training opportunities) ¨C and that is presuming they know that support is available for people with caring responsibilities in the first place.

Unsurprisingly, as young carers transition into university or employment, the demands on their time only increase. Yet those in full-time education, ridiculously, are . And while many colleges and universities do make financial support available to young adult carers, it is limited and discretionary.

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All this reinforces young adult carers¡¯ sense that their own needs are not important. It is hard enough for them to conceptualise an identity or life beyond caring; having institutions that implicitly reinforce this message is a certain way to ensure that rates of educational participation and retention among young carers remains pitifully low.

When I first Googled the name of my university and ¡°young carers¡±, the search engine responded with: ¡°Did you mean careers?¡±. There was nothing. That disconnect with my own lived experience ¨C not to mention the lived experience of dozens of other young adult carers I knew ¨C is something that has stuck with me.

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Nevertheless, I am aware of the privilege of having had a much lighter caring role than some others, and I have made it through to my final year. But it breaks my heart to read that young adult carers are , a statistic that increases to a horrifying .

We have certainly seen a general trend towards universities investing more in outreach efforts and diversifying their admissions. Yet this is only half of the picture: inreach ¨C supporting students to remain in and ultimately succeed in higher education ¨C is just as necessary. It is clear that such support is currently lacking: young adult carers are five times more likely to drop out of college than are students without caring responsibilities.

So what needs to change? Beyond opening up Carer¡¯s Allowance to full-time students, I think change can be triggered on a much smaller level. In many cases, this is not a question of reinventing the wheel. Solutions can be surprisingly simple. They begin with flexible study policies that do not penalise the student who needs a few extra days because mum had a health scare a week before the deadline, or the student who missed an in-person lecture because their brother¡¯s hospital appointment overran.

For example, the Learning and Work Institute¡¯s project advocates for the importance of universities having a ¡°carer¡¯s lead¡±. This is a familiar face and point of contact for student carers at university, who can advocate on their behalf and save them the emotional burden of having to repeatedly explain why they might benefit from a little extra flexibility with deadlines, or with dates for moving in and out.

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While I have been lucky to have had very positive relationships with my tutors, I know this is not common: many young carers I know, from a range of universities, have had to justify their role to staff who simply cannot believe that a young person is taking on such responsibility while studying.

Moreover, I have been asked on several occasions by well-meaning students and staff about what it was like to grow up in care. This baffled me until I realised that they were confusing the terms ¡°young carer¡± and ¡°care leaver¡±. Greater awareness of the unique experiences and challenges faced by both groups could be created by including information about them in freshers¡¯ week student inductions and staff training programmes.

Culture change also involves better valuing lived caring experience in university and job applications. Time management? Handling a crisis? Staying resilient in the face of adversity? These often come as second nature to young adult carers. A more compassionate and clear-eyed higher education system and job market would recognise these skills as assets.

The US Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor once said: ¡°Until we get equality in education, we won¡¯t have an equal society¡±. She is absolutely right. Young adult carers hold together the seams of society unnoticed; we deserve an equal chance to make the best of ourselves at university. Anything less is a stitch-up.

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Holly Cobb is a fourth-year undergraduate at a UK university.