Students and Work

When I did my undergraduate degree (in the 1980s) there were no tuition fees for home students in the UK; and I received a maintenance grant that covered most of my living expenses.

After completing my first year, I worked during the summer vacation period of 1985 with a focus on saving up so that I could go to the Caribbean for the first time. The following summer, at the end of my second year, off I went to Jamaica for six weeks, combining a holiday and getting to know family members alongside some data collection for my dissertation on the Jamaican sugar worker cooperatives. I nurtured an emerging love for research about people, their lives and social justice, without having to think about subsequently working in or out of term-time during my final year.

The landscape for tuition and maintenance across the UK is rather different today, strikingly so for home students. During the cost-of-living crisis, the continued growth in the number of home and international students who are combining their studies with paid work is quite rightly receiving greater attention. A recent report from the UK based Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI)¹ presented findings from a survey of 10,000 full-time undergraduates indicating that a record 56 per cent had paid employment while they were studying, averaging 14.5 hours per week. Undertaking work and internships (whether paid or unpaid) while on an undergraduate or postgraduate degree programme can be enriching. It can also contribute to cv building, which is salient as competition for graduate jobs hits a record high².

Three-quarters of respondents in the HEPI survey³ reported that work had a negative impact on their studies, which is indicative of impacts on attainment. Data from the Office for National Statistics suggests that 90 per cent of students in England are concerned about their financial situation⁴, including the cost of rent, food and travel. A National Union of Students survey found that 14 per cent of students used foodbanks in the 2023/24 academic year, compared to 7 per cent in 2021/225. There are growing, evidence based, concerns that financial pressure to combine work and study is exacerbating existing inequalities⁵.

At the recent Summer Term Essex Business School Equality Diversity and Inclusion Conference we began the day with a student panel, entitled “Students’ perspectives on EDI Matters: Combining study and paid and unpaid work”. Experiences and perceptions were shared around working while studying part-time and studying full-time while managing caring responsibilities for young children.

The discussion reinforced that undertaking paid work can be essential to the sustainability of learning commitments and being able to make ends meet while studying. Time management is important. It can really help to have teaching events condensed into one or two days when trying to plan work around programmes of study. This is quite rightly being reflected in how we try to timetable teaching on our programmes. While effort was being made to attend teaching sessions, this was not always possible. Access to Listen Again was appreciated, providing an opportunity to catch up on missed sessions, for example when shifts clashed with teaching events. The timing of sessions is also particularly important for students who are not local as peak time travel can be prohibitively expensive. 9am lectures cost more to travel to on the train than 12pm lectures (and the time that you get the train home is a consideration too).

The demands on students with young children can be hidden and time considerations are critical here too. Combining study with caring for children was described as requiring a high degree of organisational skills helping to fulfil both study and home commitments. Coping strategies include working very long days, late into the evening once the children have gone to bed. For international students with caring responsibilities there can be a lack of childcare support when students are away from family networks.
Combining paid and unpaid work with study can be challenging for wellbeing. The timing of coursework deadlines, including how they are clustered really matters when you are ‘juggling’ study with jobs and caring responsibilities. The intensity of everyday lives is such that it can be challenging to socialise with other students on your programme. For some this may contribute to a sense of dislocation from the social dimension of the programme.

Discussions about contemporary experience of students and work need to acknowledge the complex macro-level landscape. However, to support our students in fulfilling their potential, we need to keep the conversation going. That dialogue needs to feed into research and action on how the reality of students’ lives in the 2020s can be reflected in our evolving practice and support as a University, while also contributing to our work on addressing attainment gaps.

Endnotes and further reading

1. Jonathan Neves and Rose Stephenson, Student Experience Survey 2023. Higher Education Policy Institute and Advance HE (2023). 
2. Neves and Stephenson, ibid.
3. Jo Faragher, Competition for graduate jobs hits record. Personnel Today (2024) Available at Competition for graduate jobs hits record high
4. Office for National Statistics, Cost of living and higher education students, England: 30 January to 13 February 2023. 
5. National Union of Students Project Overview, Spring 2024 Findings. 
6. Joe Lewis, Students and the Rising Cost of Living (2023)