Fitting work? Students speak about campus employment

Abstract

Balancing part-time work and studies has become commonplace for university students in Canada and other countries where the costs of education have risen over time. While there is a substantial literature on the impacts of term-time work on studies, little has been written about campus employment programs, which are becoming more commonplace in North American universities. This paper addresses this gap by considering students’ experiences in such a program at a western Canadian university. Focusing primarily on qualitative data from a longitudinal study, we examine the various reasons for the attractiveness of this program, which go beyond the promise of professional, career-related work experience. Our analysis draws on the academic literature on work-study roles, which examines whether term-time work has a more positive or negative effect on student outcomes as well as sociocultural literature that is more attentive to different contextual features of the work-study relationship. We find that university-sponsored jobs are highly valued by students for their workplace relationships, regulation, and flexibility. Positive relationships at work are facilitated by supervisors’ recognition of students’ academic priorities and opportunities to develop peer-support networks on campus. Other important features for students include the convenience of working where one studies, and the ability to build work schedules around academic schedules. However, the limited access to ‘good’ campus jobs raises concerns about equity.