Two-thirds of enrolled students in the UK are having part-time jobs primarily to survive. A student at Oxford who works as a part-time customer service provider for a dating app admitted that work pressure can greatly affect her academic performance at times.
Why do students go for part-time jobs?
A huge number of enrolled students in the UK are doing part-time jobs in order to survive college life. Part-time jobs come in different forms, it may be through school assistant programs, making money out of hobby and skills, grown-up jobs, fast food jobs, and even jobs involving explicit practices.
There are instances when she experiences calls from furious customers, it translates into stress on her part and eventually causing her to lose focus on her academics.
The environment she is working with is not as friendly and nice most of the time, but she still got to do it in order to have additional funds for her Ph.D. degree.
An article on part-time jobs of students entitled “The Side Hustle Economy” discovered that around 34% of students aged 16 to 24 are doing part-time work. The reason behind the extracurricular activities is that some student loans do fall short of the average monthly living costs of these students.
Based on a survey by Save the Student, the current student loan capacity of universities lack around £267 monthly for student living costs.
Different forms of part-time jobs
The most accessible sideline students can get into are campus-based assistance programs, a student can either work at the library, computer laboratory, registrar, or anything that needs work assistance a student is capable of. The problem though is that most universities only have limited slots for student-assistant programs, most likely first-come-first-served basis.
Another industry that accepts a lot of part-time work is the fast-food chain industry. Most fast-foods do need a lot of manpower to operate, especially for those who are quite operationally busy. Here, part-timers can earn and at the same time benefit from possible free food during breaks.
There are a lot of student success stories from those who experience working part-time in the fast-food industry. Some large companies even absorb these students once they’ve graduated in college.
Eight percent of the students doing part-time are into gambling, may be physical or virtual betting.
An alarming area though is the adult industry. From a low of 2% in 2017, the percentage of students resorting to adult or erotica work has risen to 4%. Work is easy and the money is high. Some students resort to these things just in order to provide for their studies in aiming for a better life after college.
There are also a few cases of drug trade among these students who want to earn easy money, though the instances are quite minimal.
The education board does hope that the government will provide additional support for higher education helping students stay focused on their studies and not on how to provide for their financial needs. The government should provide reasonable student loans and subsidize more on higher education expenses.
