Changing expectations of paid
work v study time commitments
between students and tertiary
education institutions
Edgar Burns
School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University,
Melbourne
Noel Yahanpath
Faculty of Business and Computing, Eastern
Institute of Technology, Napier
Abstract: This paper extends recent research by the authors into part-time semester work by tertiary
degree students at one New Zealand polytechnic. Reading empirical work within the literature on the
growing phenomenon of student paid work during the teaching periods of the academic year leads us
to explore the culture shift that appears to be taking place in tertiary students’ expectations of early
adult lifestyle and further education. The paper presents an argument for this interpretation of student
paid work and speculates what policy and other consequences flow from this.
Key words: semester employment; student loans; student paid work
1. Introduction
The 1990s shift in New Zealand tertiary education to student loans has become a permanent feature of
tertiary education in this country (Manthei and Gilmore, 2005, pp. 202-203). Student borrowing was
initially understood as the main driver pushing students to part-time work to support their tertiary
education. However, a more complex picture of student needs, expectations and motivation has been
steadily emerging around the issue of student paid work as studies of this phenomenon continue to
accumulate over time.
2. Research question
The aim of this study is to explore the divergent views of the tertiary student and tertiary education
institutions regarding study time commitment to complete tertiary education successfully. Our
tentative conjecture is that today there is developing, if it has not already developed, a new student
model (expectations) of what it is to be a tertiary degree student - held by students - that is at odds
with the traditional model (expectations) of what a tertiary student is, and does, which is held by
tertiary educators and administrators. While there are undoubtedly divergent emphases between
different disciplinary and faculty sectors of tertiary environment, we intend to avoid a one-size-fits-all
approach. Our prior work (Burns & Yahanpath, 2010; Yahanpath & Burns, 2011) and related
discussions with students on the one hand and teaching colleagues and administrators on the other,
lead us to a general hypothesis about the changing culture of tertiary education. The policy context of
our attention to student semester time paid work is the inattention shown in the absence of reference
to student paid work by policy makers that is clearly demonstrated, for instance, in the recent New
Zealand Tertiary Education Strategy 1010-2015 (2010) document, and the recent UK Browne Report
(2010).
3. Methodology
Two sources of data are utilised in this paper. The first is an exploration of Robotham’s (2009)
aggregation of nearly a score of studies on tertiary student part-time semester work. His table is
reproduced here and from this some analysis of the collected evidence is made (Table 1). Our own
current research data on student part-time paid work is then situated within this larger body of studies
(Table 2). In the light of the discussion thus generated, a second step in exploring the wider
implications of student paid work is to draw on a small part of our study to illustrate how talk of parttime paid work is only part of the story (Table 3). We currently have an article under review in which
we present major findings from our research, following our replication of Manthei and Gilmore’s
(2005) study. The data segment from our study used here serves only to demonstrate how the larger
student paid work picture may be structured.
4. Findings and analysis
Investigation of the literature on this topic led us well beyond these New Zealand studies
encompassing variety of disciplines and various parts of the world. On way to efficiently summarise
here some of that literature is to point to the summary table Robotham (2009, p. 326) prepared in
similarly trying to review what this field of research was saying about student paid work. The table
below reproduces Robotham’s Table 1 in which key results of nineteen previous studies were
compiled in one place.
Table 1: Summary of previous studies of part-time employment among full-time university students in
the UK and internationally
Study
Lindsay and Paton-Salzberg
Barke et al.
Labour Research Department
Long and Hayden
Metcalf
Curtis and Shani
Curtis and Williams
Curtis and Atkinson
Hunt et al.
Liddell and Rae
Carney et al.
Jones and Sloan
Manthei and Gilmore
Mihail and Karaliopoulou
Year of Study
Sample Size
1996
2000
2000
2001
2001
2002
2002
2004
2004
2004
2005
2005
2005
2005
193
879
286
34,752
782
359
368
193
2,737
216
756
784
83
466
% in part-time
employment
57
36.6
72
72.5
46
55
59
85
49
68
50
46
81
32
Tam and Morrison
Kulm and Kramer
Moreau and Leathwood
Salamonson and Andrew
Curtis
2005
2006
2006
2006
2007
417
500
310
267
336
64
89
70
78
59
This table comprise nineteen studies accumulating across just over a decade period. A variety of
sample sizes were used, mostly based on available cohorts for study, and discipline contexts
investigated are similarly often related to researchers’ institutional location; most use student selfreport surveys, though note Rolfe (2002). The modest correlation (0.24) between year and percentage
of students in part time work across these studies rises if the following studies are added in. The
statistics indicate that significant emphasis has been placed on this subject more recently by the large
number of studies undertaken since 2002.
The relationship between time (year) and percent of students in paid employment is illustrated in
Robotham’s table is visually in Figure 1 below. Given the disparate nature of some of these studies,
there is clearly more opportunity for other studies to generate new data and further interrogate this set
of data to develop more accurate measures of change through time.
Figure 1: Percentage of students in part-time paid employment
It is also possible to extract further information from the information in Robotham’s table, see Table 2
below.
Table 2: Descriptive analysis of percentage in part-time employment
Mean
Standard error
Median
Mode
Standard deviation
Sample variance
Kurtosis
Skewness
Range
Minimum
Maximum
61.8
3.9
61.5
46.0
16.5
272.1
-0.09
-0.01
27.0
32.0
89.0
The final column of the Table 1 above provides the percentage of students in each of the studies
listed engaged in part-time paid employment. These range from 32 per cent to 89 percent, though all
but two (32, 36.6) are 46 percent or above - that is, about half or more of the respective student
cohorts. In our small study at a New Zealand polytechnic, the 69 percent of students engaged in parttime paid work is close to the median of Robotham’s compilation of studies (61.5%), especially the
more recent studies; and may be closer to the two antipodean studies cited below. Outside that
collection, and closer to home, McInnis and Hartley reported in 2002 (pp. 5-6) that, “In Australia, 78
percent of full-time enrolled students have some paid employment and 72.5 percent have paid
employment during semester”, considerably more than the United Kingdom at that time. Recent
Australian research by Hlvac, Peterson and Piscioneri (2011, p. 28) reports “over two thirds of
students are likely to be engaged in some form of employment”.
Reflecting on this wider literature, then, generates new questions around what it is to be a student/
what is it to be a worker? These questions are closely intertwined. We can examine these questions
and issues from our current New Zealand study of student semester-time-paid-work in which we
distinguished between full-time and part-time paid work using 32 hours per week as the cut-off point
(Burns Yahanpath, 2010).
Table 3: Percentages of students engaged in both paid work and study
Paid work
Part-time
Study
Part-time
Full-time
10
55
Totals
65*
Full-time
Totals
20
15
35
30
70
100
*
Figure differs from Table 2 mean/median since not all respondents specified hours worked.
As can be seen from the Table 3, 55 percent of full-time students engaged in part-time work.
Surprisingly, 15 percent of full-time students also work full-time. Especially, in the latter group we
can clearly see a conflict between the expectations of Tertiary Education Institutions (TEI) and
students. Even for mature-age students with high motivation and ability something has to “give” when
subject prescriptions for this TEI are based on 150 hours of class contact and personal study time.
Obviously such data is simply illustrative and not generalisable on its own, but it does offer an
empirical scenario within which to think about the overlap of paid work in the realm of academic
study.
There are several implications from the above findings and analysis about student paid semester
time employment. But the simple high percentages of students involved must be considered against
two sets of background changes, some of which are internal to the study process and some external to
it. These in turn make measuring the significance of the changes difficult, and also assessing the effect
on tertiary education in practical and policy terms difficult as well.
One of the internal factors is duration or hours worked per week. This is an important factor that
should be considered beyond the simple high percentages of student in paid work. For example; four
to six hours per week sits very differently from twenty hours. There is some suggestion that once
about 12-15 hours have been reached, negative effects on students’ academic performance emerge.
Another internal factor is the kind of studies being pursued, For example, applied professional fields
have differences from fields such as music or arts. Further one has to question whether placements or
internships are included in the meaning of paid work. Sometimes this revolves around different
attitudes to academic study – nurses or business students sometimes not seeing themselves as
“academic types”, or having a different orientation to work experience having a much higher value for
subsequently getting employed post-degree. A different factor for first year or subsequent
undergraduate years is significant insofar as confidence to “handle” both paid work and study is often
raised in anecdotal student reports from students revising their earlier belief in their capacity to handle
paid work and study.
External factors that need to be considered include aspects not inherent in academic study but
which students bring with them from their families and other social milieux. A general observation is
that expanding the tertiary student cohort as government policy does not automatically create more
academic high achievers but reaches further into the cohort who achieved less well in secondary
education. This wider group of students has different needs for support, and different expectations of
what tertiary education is for, and will do for them. An overlapping but different external factor is that
wider inclusion (seen as a desirable government policy goal, Ministry of Education, 2010) brings
students from what might be called working class backgrounds rather than middle-class or
professional backgrounds. In achieving to some degree that intention, tertiary education is changed by
the practices, instrumentality, differing social and cultural capitals such widened student cohorts
bring.
We conjecture that even beyond these ever changing underlying factors that complicate discussion
of the importance or consequences of student paid work there is a broader shift going on. It is partly
influenced by these and related factors, but can be stated as a general trend. Tertiary education today
is seen in a different way by students and potential student than a generation ago. The distinctive
lifestyle and physical living constraints required by minimal income (such as lower standards of
dressing, or reduced access to music and phones) have to a considerable extent shifted today to an
expectation and desire to live as young adults not as students per se. Being students can be fun,
mixing with others of a similar age, and aiming to get credentialed to take a better kind of job than
otherwise. But many students also want to dress well, eat out, expect to buy coffees and personal
accessories, and take in entertainments.
This depiction is not an absolute contrast to previous student eras; there have always been well-off
and more constrained student lifestyles. But over five decades there has been a shift in New Zealand’s
education sector from about seven percent of the population undertaking tertiary study to about one
third. Now in a self-funding student loan environment, this places student preferences in a very
different context. In our analysis we see the significance of student debt as a driver as did Manthei and
Gilmore, but in our view it is only one aspect. We argue there is a culture shift of lifestyle in tertiary
student expectation and motivations, and that paid work while studying is for many a central part of
that experience and understanding of appropriate and “natural”, life stage.
This, then, leads us to propose a two model view of tertiary education. There is a conventional
model held by tertiary educators and administrators (and somewhat unreflectively by government
policy makers) in which students enrol in tertiary education, mostly full-time, to rationally pursue
their career-enabling studies in a field of their choice to gain the credentials they need for a
professional career that adds value to their lives and to the larger economy. The other model is not
held by educators but by students themselves. Increasingly it is not “read off” the conventional model
but is an emergent student-derived model.
With some degree of uncertainty, but applying a local rationality, not the formal rationality of neoliberal education policies (Hodkinson, 1998), student are encouraged to undertake tertiary studies a
way forward in their working lives. But they do not bracket this part of their lives off from a
subsequent period, but combine paid work earnings and tertiary study. On this understanding, each is
desirable and necessary. For many, increasingly for most, this is not optional. The conventional view
that some paid work is harmless, optional, an add-on, is empirically incorrect (for a variety of reasons
as we have indicated earlier). The supposed non-negotiability of attending lectures and tutorials/labs
and requirement to read/research for assignments meets the non-negotiability of hours of paid work,
some lifestyle elements, and the entanglement of employer requirements contrasting to academic
requirements.
Such contrasting full-time pressures are very difficult to sustain, or are achieved at personal cost.
Various negative consequences might be identified from low quality study (subjects or “degrees by
Ds”), shortcutting via plagiarism and other cramming practices, student burnout or poor mental
health, limiting recreation, and so on. On the institutional side there is pressure to soften grading
practices, added workload to accommodate lateness, more mechanical teaching modes, or “repair”
support services beyond simply academic staircasing. Our primary intention in this discussion is not
to focus on negatives but to suggest that if there is indeed a firming but different model from which
students operate, there is a central education policy tension emerging between inclusion and extension
aims for tertiary education, and quality objectives such as retention, completion, and levels of
performance.
In our view, paid work in semester time is the great under-theorised “elephant in the room” of
tertiary policy. Our article pointed out that in the hugely important UK government Browne report
(2010, p. 39) it remarkably spoke of this widespread phenomenon of undergraduate semester-time
paid work just once in its passing remark that students from low income families “need to rely on part
time work or family contributions to make ends meet”. Whether students see themselves as primarily
students - even when enrolled full-time or primarily as young workers who “do”/ “fit in” tertiary
study, is to us a moot point, worthy of greater investigation. Student reality and education sector
reality appear to be on divergent paths.
5. Limitations and areas for future research
In this paper we have pushed beyond the discussion and conclusion in our substantive article reporting
our recent research on part-time student paid work. In one sense, then, we are addressing a limitation
of our previous work by here reflexively exploring - speculating, in the proper use of that word, not
arbitrarily assuming certain things to be so - the formation of a shifting cultural definition of what it is
to be a tertiary student today. Passing comments about the consequences of this new framing have
been made, but our main interest here has been to delineate an alternative model to the conventional
one as a possible interpretative model and as an empirically reasonable proposal.
A danger point is that in speaking in this general way we open ourselves to challenges of overgeneralising. This danger is one reason why we have disconnected this discussion from the
substantive research we have done, which would not by itself justify these ideas. Instead we have reinspected the wider sweep of paid work studies about tertiary students from which to make our case.
The full-time/part-time data drawn from our current work is used here merely for scenario-building
not broader evidence. If there is some merit in this proposal, then, further research work may be better
served in framing up individual study results in a similar way rather than simply enumerating
percentages of students in paid work, or the number of hours and so on, even if these averages are
different for different faculties/ areas of tertiary study.
The model might help address questions that differentiate the experience and effects of shifting
student expectations and paid work experience. How much the contrasting model applies to the newer
more widely included cohorts of student rather than the traditional student groups is open to debate
and investigation. Although we have tried to advance a general discussion, it does seem reasonable to
suggest that there a significant variations across the student population, in many ways. Is student
ability important in analysing this? Is social class and occupational backgrounds relevant? Do media
representations have a part to play? Do macro-policy setting and constraints (such as loan schemes,
institutional cost parameters, tertiary provider competition, and job markets) have consequential
effects in what students choose, or are able to choose?
We see a significant limitation in research studies into student paid work, our own included, in the
focus on self-report surveys. Other investigation methodologies such as focus groups and in-depth
interviews are likely to offer quite different information, and are particularly important in
substantiating what students think, and getting closer to how they actually act, and what they are
responding to, in making decisions about paid work in those early years of their undergraduate
studies. How they revise or adjust these decisions over time, and the compromises they make to meet
conflicting pressures would make for a much improved evidential base not unlike the careful research
work by Hodkinson (1998) mentioned earlier.
6. Conclusion
This paper has explored implications of the research literature on tertiary student part-time paid work
during semester time. We have argued this body of research speaks to fundamental themes in tertiary
educational policy, but as we noted at the beginning of this paper it is largely ignored in policy
discussions, pointing to the absence of reference to student paid work in the recent New Zealand
Tertiary Education Strategy 1010-2015, document, and the recent UK Browne Report. If part-time
paid work continues to be ignored we suggest that there will be consequences for achieving policy
objectives since policy aims will be out of step with the empirical reality of student actions. Re-setting
tertiary education policy in the light of such changes or having to cope with unforeseen consequences
of this emerging student model appears to be the likely options.
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