In a cost of living crisis – which has been shown to significantly impact students through a cost of learning crisis, concerns have been mounting that students are being driven into paid work and diverted away from their studies.
Commentators also point to lost opportunities from the wider university offer, including extracurricular activities and careers services. News stories abound of lecturers bewildered by empty lecture halls, as students are forced to prioritise paid work over attending classes and take on extra shifts to help make ends meet.
The government and sector bodies appear increasingly concerned, leading to numerous reports, surveys and an inquiry by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Students.
As a team leading a major national study into earning while learning, we have been analysing national data sets and speaking to women students in schools, colleges and universities across England. Through this research, we have become alert to the ways student work is significant both within the wider economy and students’ own lives and understandings of “decent” work.
And although we recognise the temptation to blame student work for some of the problems seen in educational outcomes and attendance, our data reveals how the current conversation is beset by a series of assumptions and blind spots that take us away from addressing more urgent priorities for student workers.
Nothing new
First, claims that university students are “driven” into paid work by the current cost-of-living crisis, implies both that student employment is a new phenomenon and that experiences of paid work start at university.
In reality, student employment – whilst rising steadily – has been a commonplace feature of many students’ lives over the last two decades with approximately 60 percent of full-time university students in England engaging in some form of paid work.
Moreover, students don’t simply discover jobs at university – most arrive with significant experience of earning while learning. Our analysis shows that most school- and college-age students engage in paid work, for example, as shop assistants, carers or babysitters.
Along with university students, these young workers constitute significant proportions of the workforce in some sectors such as hospitality and retail, where students comprise up to 20 per cent of the labour force. Student employment is far from marginal, then, and certainly not in the sections of the economy described above.
There is also an assumption that paid work is a mere distraction or a necessary evil in times of financial hardship for students. Current debates on student work seem preoccupied with the negative impacts of paid work on student engagement, attendance and outcomes (both in terms of wellbeing and education).
Whilst these are not to be dismissed, students we have spoken to present paid work as holding broader value and meaning in their lives and journeys into adulthood.
Money was of course an important driver, but they also reflected on how their jobs provide a sense of independence, enable social connections and friendships, and help them build skills and competencies that they regard as valuable for their futures.
That is not to say that students do not encounter difficulties at work or undertake work that they would rather not do. But students view these experiences – of rude customers, unfair managers and, sometimes, gender discrimination and harassment – as equipping them with the kinds of “real world” experience that so many employers and commentators claim they lack.
What are they doing?
Crucially, the debate around rising student employment often stops short of interrogating the actual work that students do and their working conditions. Our research and others’ tells us that student workers are not only concentrated in sectors that the economy relies upon, but these are some of the lowest paid and most insecure forms of work.
Students we spoke to talked about feeling exploited at work – not only in terms of poor pay and long hours, but also a sense of being disposable and replaceable – making it hard to demand better conditions.
We must urgently direct attention to supporting better working conditions, remuneration and rights for student workers. This includes ensuring fair pay, security and respect at work, and tackling discrimination in the workplace.
Improving the labour rights of student workers must be part of a wider reckoning of the intergenerational inequalities faced by students, who are experiencing a real-terms decline in value of maintenance loans, spiralling housing costs, and regressive student loan reforms.
Higher education requires a fundamental reappraisal of student funding. Until this happens, the conversation needs to be redirected away from the narrow goal of eliminating student work, towards strategies for making students’ lives more liveable, both as students and as workers.
