Working in term time could give university students the edge in tough jobs market - Jayne Dowle

This new report, from the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), argues that students working during term-time will have “a bearing on the academic experience…demands on a student’s time can create stress and challenges in balancing the requirements of the course timetable and independent study”.

“Somewhere between 12 and 17 hours paid employment is the danger zone because you’re doing a really intense paid job on top of a full-time course,” says Nick Hillman, director of Hepi.

Across a week with 168 hours in it, including Saturdays and Sundays, is that really so bad?

Hepi’s research is important, but it needs to be seen alongside the pressures that students face; tuition fees of more than £9,000 a year, student loans with commercial interest rates and vice-chancellors on salaries that would make City bankers’ eyes pop.

Should anyone really begrudge an undergraduate for taking matters into their own hands and getting a job, especially as the rising cost of living is the leading reason for students dropping out of university, according to another study, undertaken by Opinium, earlier this year?

I only ask because almost four decades ago, after five years or so delivering newspapers, washing glasses in a working men’s club, serving sandwiches in a butcher’s shop and McDonalds, I was disappointed to find that my university didn’t allow term-time working, better to spend time in the library. Or the pub. Or punting.

According to my 17-year-old daughter, currently considering her own degree choices, it still doesn’t.

Wherever she ends up, Lizzie is fully expecting to find a part-time job, and is certainly not expecting me to fund her clothes habit or pay for her hair highlighting, just as she doesn’t now.

Both my kids have worked since the week they turned 16, both studying at college at the same time. Although they have moaned at the minimum wages and unsociable hours, having jobs has – as I rightly predicted – given them confidence, chutzpah and cash of their own, of course.

They wouldn’t have it any other way. And perhaps Hepi might like to look at the bigger picture. It is clearly raising concerns over student welfare, but having a job could well do more good than harm.

Earlier this year, a scientific study by Grace Chang, studying for a PhD in the Department of Social Statistics and Demography at the University of Southampton, found that taking paid work alongside study improves a student’s “internal locus of control – the belief in one’s ability to have control over their life events”.

Such a job will also gain students income, networks and job-related skills, Chang found.

Meanwhile, a separate report, from the jobs search engine Adzuna, finds that those leaving university this year are heading into the worst jobs market for seven years, with the number of graduate-level roles down by a fifth in the last five months.

Around 570,000 students in the UK will graduate in the next few months, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency. Adzuna predicts that 44 graduates will apply for every vacancy this summer, up from 36 for each role last year.

It’s a no-brainer to me as a parent and a former boss, who regularly assessed potential work experience students on the basis of evidence of the ability to turn up on time, be a team-player and look interested, that those young people who can show previous workplace experience will stand out.

If that young person also comes with a First or Upper Second degree, so much the better. But believe me, unless it’s work in an academic or highly-rarefied field, there is nothing more entitled than a super-bright 21-year-old who has never had to get their hands dirty.

Facts are facts as Gradgrind, the curmudgeonly hardware merchant and school board superintendent in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, almost said.

Working in term time - and also during university holidays - might not be the activity of choice, but it could give young people the edge when it comes to the real world of work.