Many of the headline findings reflected in this year's Student Academic Experience Survey (SAES) 2021 will be disappointing to the sector, though perhaps not entirely unexpected. The 2021 SAES was offered to over 47,000 undergraduate students in the United Kingdom (UK) and took place between 2 February 2021 and 22 March 2021, with all four parts of the UK in lockdown. In the 2021 SAES a number of key measures have fallen to their lowest levels to date. The proportion of students who feel they have received good or very good value is very low (just over one-in-four), while the proportion whose experience has been worse than expected has more than doubled. Levels of wellbeing among the student population have continued to fall. All these findings are consistent by domicile and across most demographic groups -- although some cohorts have had a particularly challenging experience. In what may be perhaps a reaction to the long lockdown and continued disruption, the Survey presents clear evidence that learning online is not the preferred approach for the large majority of students, who state a strong preference for in-person learning. This is not driven by any particular concern around accessibility of technology, but there is a clear feeling that a return to in-person teaching is long overdue, which may potentially impact on any plans to introduce more blended learning options across the sector. [Forewords written by Alison Johns and Nick Hillman. This report was co-published by Advance HE.]