Student Employment: three new research briefings published

The ‘L-Earning: Rethinking Young Women's Working Lives’ project has unveiled new findings through a series of interim research briefings titled ‘Earning While Learning: student employment’.

The ‘L-earning: rethinking young women’s working lives’ project, is a 3-year ESRC-funded national study of young women’s earliest experiences of work, including paid work while studying, and how these experiences may contribute to gendered inequalities in later life. The project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of the ‘Transforming Working Lives’ initiative. The research team is based at the University of Leeds, University of Manchester and City St George’s, University of London. 

The ‘Earning While Learning: student employment’ briefings present original findings on student employment, drawing an analysis of national datasets and focus group interviews with 83 young women about their experiences of engaging in paid work whilst studying (‘Earning while Learning’). The participants were aged between 14-23 years old and attending schools, Further Education (FE) colleges, sixth forms, and universities across England. 

The research team have produced three distinct briefings, each tailored to a specific sector: Employers, Trade Unions, and Education. These briefings not only highlight key insights from the research but also provide targeted recommendations for each of these three sectors on how they can improve the experiences of working students. 

Professor Kim Allen, the study’s Principal Investigator has said: “Student work is not new. However, as the costs of living continue to rise, young people are increasingly having to support themselves – and often times their family – through part time jobs. These jobs offer a range of benefits and meanings for young people, but they also present challenges, and our research shows that students are not only poorly paid, but often feel unsafe and powerless in the workplace.

Our research also reveals that young women are 50% more likely than their male peers to engage in paid work while studying, and therefore are more likely to be navigating the challenges of this poorly paid and often-intensive work alongside their studies.

“Rather than ban students from working, we urge educational institutions, employers and unions to work together to improve the conditions of student work and support young people to engage in meaningful, decent and fair work.”

There will be a webinar to launch the briefings on Tuesday 3rd June at 12:00 until 12.45. Click here to sign up and find out more.   

Read the full research briefings here. 

To find out more about the study and the team, visit the project website and social media: Bluesky | Instagram | Linkedin 

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