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The Society for Research into Higher Education

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Higher education as a politicians’ playground

by Rob Cuthbert

Higher education has always been something of a playground for junior politicians; HE ministers usually serve only short terms, and many are practising for bigger jobs. (Liz Truss and Boris Johnson were both briefly shadow HE ministers.) The Coalition period was an exception, with David Willetts serving for four years and evidently deeply engaged and interested in HE. Since he left in 2014 the political game-playing has sadly degenerated, becoming ever more disconnected from the real issues facing the HE sector.

In 2024 fifty or more universities have declared or are likely to declare redundancies, as their funding position becomes ever more perilous. Student fees have been frozen at £9250 for a decade, and their real value has declined to the extent that they are now worth no more than the £6000 which applied in 2012 before the fee went to £9000. According to Mark Corver of DataHE: “… universities have lost, in real terms, around a third of their income since 2012. Most of that has happened recently. Universities have lost the equivalent of almost £3 billion from their annual UG teaching funding in just the past 18 months.”

The long-running dispute in half the sector over changes to the Universities Superannuation Scheme might have recently been resolved, but there are now major concerns about the cost of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme in the other half. UUK chief executive Vivienne Stern and UCEA chief executive Raj Jethwa wrote to Minister Robert Halfon on 18 March 2024 asking for more flexibility in whether post-92 universities must offer TPS membership to their staff, noting that 27% of post-92s had declared redundancies in 2022-2023 and 46% had done so since August 2023. TPS contributions rose sharply on 1 April 2024 as Tom Williams reported for Times Higher Education on 18 March 2024.

Pay disputes have led to repeated strikes and action short of strikes, especially marking and assessment boycotts, affecting the whole sector. This, coupled with Covid, has meant increased workloads for academic and professional staff in major and repeated reconstruction of teaching programmes, with many universities relying increasingly on a precariat of staff on short-term contracts. Negotiations between employers and staff are inevitably complicated by the wide range of institutional fortunes, which makes affordable resolution for everyone difficult to achieve. Covid and employment disputes have brought massive disruption for students, with class actions for compensation continuing as an additional looming threat to HE budgets. Problems with student mental health have reached epidemic proportions, affected not only by the pandemic and loan-driven student debt but also the spiralling cost of university and private student accommodation, which is in short supply in many places.

In 2024 we do expect a general election, but we don’t expect the massive problems for UK HE to be an election issue. Voters mostly care much more about cost of living, the energy crisis, climate change, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the NHS … and even within education, universities rank well behind schools and nursery places as topics for political debate. As Tom Williams reported for Times Higher Education on 16 May 2023, HE Minister Robert Halfon declared that “… the sector was in a “fairly strong” position – compared with much of the economy given the current financial difficulties – and implied management may be to blame at universities faring badly, rather than his government’s funding system.” Halfon resigned unexpectedly on 26 March 2024, so after 14 years of Coalition and  Conservative government we have our ninth new HE Minister, Luke Hall. It is the eleventh such appointment, since both Jo Johnson and Chris Skidmore served twice, and only four of the 11 appointments lasted for more than a year. There is a striking contrast with appointments as Schools Minister, the role in which Nick Gibb has served for most of the last 14 years, despite being sacked and reappointed by successive prime ministers.

For most of the Coalition period the Universities Minister was David (now Lord) Willetts, who was perhaps the main architect of the Higher Education and Research Act (HERA) 2017, eventually steered into law by Jo (now Lord) Johnson. HERA legislated for the HE ‘market’ and created a new regulator, the Office for Students (OfS). The policy sought to drive up quality through competition, with an influx of new ‘alternative’ providers; the Act made extensive provision for failing HE institutions to go out of business. Willetts’ special adviser, Nick Hillman, later became an effective Director of HEPI, but his HEPI blog of 14 February 2024 asked ‘Whatever happened to all those alternative providers?’,  while still defending the policy to which he contributed. A more plausible view is that the HERA version of the ‘market’ in HE had been tried and comprehensively failed. Against the success of a few new providers like the Dyson Institute there have been many more seeking to provide mostly lower-level courses, mostly in business, mostly in London. Operating an HE institution is a complex, difficult and long-term activity, and after relaxing requirements for entry to the higher education ‘market’, government was forced to crack down on the more egregious excesses of some of the new alternative providers. ‘Driving up quality through competition’ has been shown up as a fantasy; what always worked much better was relying on the intrinsic motivation of people in HE to do the best for their students, in what has always been vigorous competition with other institutions. Self-regulation is of course inadequate: HE institutions need external quality assurance and control, but the OfS chose to do away with the QAA, the designated quality body, by setting conditions which jeopardised QAA’s international credibility and forcing QAA to step down. Instead the OfS has set up its own quality arrangements in an apparently long-term plan which goes against all the expectations when HERA was enacted. 

That was the good news. A new government was entitled to try a new policy for HE, as it did. It didn’t work, so what happened next? Not repeal, of course, but neither was it, as we might have hoped, adaptation of the new policy to make it work better. In the chaos and increasingly rapid turnover of the post-Brexit administrations, politicians in the DfE and elsewhere became obsessed with culture wars. They brought forward a major new piece of legislation which had nothing to do with HE finance, staffing issues, student problems, or even the supposed focus of ‘levelling up’. Obsessed by immigration numbers, government even doubled down on HE’s financial problems with visa restrictions seriously affecting international student recruitment, especially for postgraduate recruitment which for many years had underpinned the viability of STEM disciplines. It was convenient for government that the OfS continued to give reassurances about HE finance, but it was hardly surprising, since government had installed a Conservative peer as the OfS chair.

The new legislation was the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, education’s contribution to armaments in the culture wars. There were, of course, problems in some, perhaps even many, HE institutions over what might and might not be said in different contexts. A HEPI blog by Josh Freeman on 13 October 2022 argued that there was a problem with self-censorship and ‘quiet’ no-platforming. In the US some prominent university presidents lost their jobs arguing with politicians about the need to protect diversity in HE debate. The war on woke has not perhaps reached that pitch in the UK yet. But the Act required OfS to appoint a free speech ‘tsar’, as it did, and OfS issued proposals on 14 December 2023 on how the free speech regime will operate, launching a consultation on 26 March 2024. The results are unconvincing to those on the ground in the institutions. Jim Dickinson blogged for Wonkhe on 6 March 2024 about the shambles which government has created with its free speech legislation: “We are literally less than six months away from OfS opening a complaints scheme under which one group of students will say another’s actions amount to antisemitism, while the other will say they are threatening their right to express legally protected anti-Zionist beliefs – both saying their free speech is threatened as a result, both arguing they are being harassed, and both reasonable in asserting that they were assured their free speech and protection from harassment was assured.” The Act may even rival the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 for its unworkability in practice.

The principal cheerleader for the new Act was Education Minister (and for two chaotic days in the fall of Boris Johnson, Secretary of State for Education) Michele Donelan, who continued to champion it even as she moved to become Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology in the Sunak administration. Donelan relied on a press release from right wing think tank Policy Exchange to pick a fight with UKRI about the members of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. The release was written by Donelan’s former special adviser Iain Mansfield. UKRI suspended its Committee and their membership pending an inquiry, which exonerated the members, one of whom sued Donelan for libel and won £15000 damages, as Faye Brown reported for Sky News on 12 March 2024. The damages were paid by the government, prompting widespread disbelief; Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt even suggested that we should cut Donelan some slack because she had not taken the £16000 redundancy payment to which she was entitled  from her two days as Secretary of State for Education. It would all be deeply embarrassing, if government ministers were still capable of feeling shame.

The playground urgently needs more grown-ups, to do higher education policy as if higher education mattered.

Rob Cuthbert is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England and Joint Managing Partner, Practical Academics rob.cuthbert@btinternet.com. Twitter @RobCuthbert


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Graduate outcomes: Beyond numbers, towards quality?

by Tej Nathwani and Ghislaine Dell

with a foreword and afterword by SRHE Network Convenors Tracy Scurry and Daria Luchinskaya

Foreword

As many of us working with graduate employment statistics will know, it’s difficult to find up-to-date large-scale data of graduates’ experiences of work. In the SRHE event Exploring graduate outcomes: Do we need to look beyond earnings and occupation?, Tej Nathwani (HESA) introduced a new graduate outcomes measure capturing subjective aspects of job quality, while Ghislaine Dell (Head of Careers at Bath University and member of the AGCAS Research and Knowledge Committee) reflected on the implications from a practitioner perspective. In this follow-up blog, Tej and Ghislaine comment on the issues in capturing subjective graduate outcomes and outline directions for future research. HESA is keen to get your feedback on its measures: see the end of the blog for how to get in touch.

Capturing job quality in HESA’s Graduate Outcomes survey

Tej Nathwani

Since the financial crisis, there has been a fundamental rethink about the way we measure economic and societal progress, with greater attention now given to subjective forms of data. At the individual or micro level, this has resulted in growing international interest in the quality of work – essentially those parts of our employment that correlate with our wellbeing. From a UK perspective, Scotland led the way in bringing this matter to the forefront with the formation of the Fair Work Convention. Not long after, we saw the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices published, which recommended the dissemination of regular data on eighteen job quality indicators covering seven broad dimensions.

Graduate outcomes in the UK have historically been assessed solely on the basis of earnings and whether individuals find themselves working in professional or managerial occupations. Yet, research examining the aspirations of higher education students indicates that they want a career that uses their skills, aligns with their ambitions and that can enable them to make impact. Under the Fair Work Convention framework, these aspects embody fulfilling employment. Furthermore, funding and regulatory bodies also want to see all graduates find such work.

With no data currently available on this matter, this clearly represents an information gap in graduate labour market statistics. As an organisation that adheres to the Code of Practice for Statistics, HESA have therefore started to conduct research to fill this space. This has involved using three questions in the Graduate Outcomes questionnaire relating to these features of employment to form a single composite measure that captures fulfilment (or the ‘job design and nature of work’ as it is also commonly referred to). Our ambition is to introduce this into our official statistics/open data in forthcoming years.

Indeed, with the importance of job quality set to grow, one pathway we are currently exploring for the future development of the Graduate Outcomes survey is the addition of new questions on other elements of decent work, as identified by the Measuring Job Quality Working Group.    

Ghislaine Dell

Students make career decisions for very personal and subjective reasons. Recent research from Cibyl shows us that the most frequently looked for qualities in students’ career choices are interesting work, career progression, good work-life balance, and training & development. This matches very well to the proposed new job quality indicator. The Government’s continued emphasis on degrees offering good return on investment is at odds with what the workforce of the future are seeking. Notably, Tej’s analysis showed that, after about £25,000, higher salary does not increase graduates’ reported wellbeing, but more fulfilling work, as captured by the new measures, does. From a governmental and individual perspective, then, knowing what jobs are ‘good jobs’ is important for a thriving society. An indicator which focuses on fulfilment could enable students to make a more informed choice between possible career directions.

However, there is a potential issue around the way in which we can capture this. For example, if we take ‘I am utilising what I learnt in my studies in my work’. Many graduate jobs are discipline-agnostic, and so a chemist, for example, would not be using ‘what they learnt’ in terms of Chemistry, in a financial services job. HESA’s cognitive testing of its survey questions provides a starting point for understanding how respondents are likely to approach these statements. However, further development of the phrasing of these questions is arguably necessary to ensure that the explanation of ‘skills mismatch’ isn’t simply attributable to graduates working in a field different to the one they studied.

 A key challenge will be to work on improving response rates so that each provider can report on this new measure with confidence. Currently, the subjective “graduate voice” questions in Graduate Outcomes are not compulsory, they rarely form part of the official narrative and minimal time is devoted to analysing and understanding the responses. If we are truly to maximise the potential of this measure, these issues need to be addressed.

The new measure both fills an information gap and provides a lever for inclusion of job quality into official statistics augmenting its importance for governments and providers.

Afterword

The lively discussion that followed this SRHE event, organised by the Employability, Enterprise and Work-based Learning Network, reflects the genuine interest and excitement in being able to gather job quality statistics at scale for the first time. HESA is plugging the long-standing information gap, enabling new research directions to take off in practitioner, academic and policy communities and providing better careers information, advice and guidance to students and graduates. There is still work to be done to improve the measures and scope to expand the coverage of job quality indicators in particular extending understanding of how students interpret and understand these questions. Your feedback, whether based on experience or research, can help in the future development of this measure.

Feedback on the types of statistics users would like to see incorporated into HESA open data based on the new measure are most welcome, as are views on potential amendments/additions to the Graduate Outcomes survey. Please send your thoughts to official.statistics@hesa.ac.uk.

For more information about the Employability, Enterprise and Work-based Learning Network and future events please see: Employability, Enterprise and Work-based Learning | SRHE

For more information about AGCAS and the Research and Knowledge Committee please see: Research and Knowledge from AGCAS

Contributors

Tej Nathwani is a Principal Researcher (Economist) at HESA, which is now part of Jisc.

Ghislaine Dell is Head of Careers, University of Bath and member of AGCAS’ Research and Knowledge Committee.

SRHE Network Convenors: Dr Daria Luchinskaya is a Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde Business School and Professor Tracy Scurry is a Professor of Work and Employment at Newcastle University Business School.


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The importance of academic mental health

by Roz Collings

It was University Mental Health day on Thursday 14th March 2024. This is a national UK project organised by Student Minds and University Mental Health Advisory Network, aiming to start a conversation to ensure university wide mental health is a priority.  I continue to be an advocate for whole institution wellbeing, enhancing focus on academics in policies and practice, as well as increasing impactful research regarding academic mental health so it was pleasing to see university staff being given a spotlight..

The mental health of students has long been a topic of interest with decades of primary research, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, alongside cross cultural comparisons, highlighting the poor mental health of University Students in comparison to the general public (Brown, 2018; Campbell et al, 2022; Macaskill, 2013). The COVID pandemic created a further influx of concentrated efforts in finding supportive solutions for the student mental health crisis (Chen and Lucock, 2022; Copeland et al, 2021). It is also well evidenced that poor mental health of students is strongly related to poor academic outcomes such as achievement and retention (Pascoe et al, 2019; Thomas et al, 2021).

But what do we know about academic mental health? Historically academic staff mental health has received minimal attention. Although investment in the area is growing, a recent systematic review highlighted the stressful academic environment and higher levels of burnout within the industry compared to other jobs (Urbina-Garcia, 2020). Increased workloads, pressures of research funding, lack of work-life balance and lack of management support are universal trends globally (Kinman and Jones, 2008) leading to many university academics leaving the profession (Heffernan et al, 2019; Ligibel et al, 2023). Dr Zoe Ayres created a poster of common stressors for academics for part of the mental health series (see Figure 1) which highlights the multiple facets and identities an academic contends with within their working life. Academia has changed substantially even within the 23 years I have been working. Centralisation and reduction of academic administrative staff moves much of the work onto the academics. With the increased focus on student mental health has come an increased reliance on academics for pastoral support. In addition performance indicators such as retention, satisfaction etc have become important outcome measures for all staff appraisals, no matter the level.

Figure 1

UK university Equity/ Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) initiatives developed from the Athena SWAN (Scientific Women’s Academic Network) Charter through Advance HE and focused initially on gender equality. Since then Advance HE has also developed the “race charter”. However, by 2021 there remained little engagement in disability equality and the intersectionality of disabled people with other EDI groups (Wolbring and Lillywhite, 2021). The University of Wolverhampton has a disability charter and is showing meaningful positive shifts towards inclusivity when it considers all the protected characteristics. However, I sit on university and national disability boards and the conversations around mental health (dis) abilities seem forced and an afterthought. My own recent research has shown high levels of stigma associated with disclosing of mental ill health and a fear of how that information would be used. Staff were concerned that they would not be taken seriously in their roles, that they would be unable to progress in their career and that their colleagues would see them as a “weak link” (Collings, 2023). I personally didn’t disclose mental ill health to my line managers until I was 15 years into my academic career and there remain concerns of how it may impact my progression.

It is time for some significant changes to happen in our profession. All of my team are deeply passionate about supporting our students with understanding and a great deal of knowledge. We should show the same level of compassion towards ourselves and our colleagues.  The culture of the university needs to change rapidly to destigmatise mental ill health disclosure and provide meaningful interventions and support. But “it seems likely that the peculiar nature of higher education actively encourages particular kinds of bullying” (Tight, 2023, p123) and research continues to highlight that bullying in UK and international HE remains rife (Tight, 2023).

What can universities do?

Universities need a fundamental shift to consider wellbeing as an institutional whole. Academic staff wellbeing is just as important as, if not more important than, student mental health. As Richard Branson once wrote “if you look after your staff they’ll look after your customers. It’s that simple”. It is that simple, and this mentality should be applied to staff and students. Academic staff who are well and focused will offer the best support, guidance and teaching to your students. Therefore, I argue that whole university mental health, with academic and professional services included, should be to the fore in university policies and higher management discussions. Higher management should be role modelling work-life balance and self-care, so it can trickle down and change the message from presenteeism and overworking to maintaining a correct sustainable balance of work and life. Developing disability equality charters enables institutions to consider their own policies in relation to institutional culture, dignity at work, grievance policies, absence policies (to incorporate disability sickness), reasonable adjustments and workload modelling. These should not be reactive but more proactive in nature, with meaningful interventions that maintain the interconnection between staff and students (Brewster et al, 2022).

Roz Collings is Associate Professor and Head of Psychology in the School of Psychology in the University of Wolverhampton’s Faculty of Education, Health and Wellbeing. She is the editor of the Research into Higher Education Abstracts journal. Roz is passionate about evidence based practice in Higher Education, raising the quality and impact of Higher Education Research and coaching/ mentoring new researchers in research design and statistical analysis. Her current research is focusing on Academic Wellbeing and she was part of the team writing the Disability Equality Act for the University of Wolverhampton with a role focusing on Mental Health. 

This is an adapted version of a blog first published on the University of Wolverhampton website and is reproduced here with permission.

Reference

Collings, R (2023) Academic Mental Health in Higher Education European Congress of Psychology Brighton, July 2023


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My Marking Life: The Role of Emotional Labour in delivering Audio Feedback to HE Students

by Samantha Wilkinson

Feedback has been heralded the most significant single influence on student learning and achievement (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004). Despite this, students critique feedback for being unfit for purpose, considering that it does not help them clarify things they do not understand (Voelkel and Mello, 2014).

Despite written feedback being the norm in Higher Education, the literature highlights the benefit of audio feedback. King et al (2008) contend that audio feedback is often evaluated by students as being ‘richer’ than other forms of feedback.

Whilst there is a growing body of literature evaluating audio feedback from the perspective of students, the experiences of academics providing audio feedback have been explored less (Ekinsmyth, 2010). Sarcona et al (2020) is a notable exception, exploring the instructor perspective, albeit briefly. The authors share how some lecturers in their study found it quick and easy to provide audio feedback, and that they valued the ability to indicate the tone of their feedback. Other lecturers, however, stated how they had to type the notes first to remember what they wanted to say, and then record these for the audio feedback, and thus were doing twice as much work.

Whilst the affectual impact of feedback on students has been well documented in the literature (eg McFarlane and Wakeman, 2011), there is little in the academic literature on the affectual impact of the feedback process on markers (Henderson-Brooks, 2021). Whilst not specifically related to audio feedback, Spaeth (2018) is an exception, articulating that emotional labour is a performance when educators seek to balance the promotion of student learning (care) with the pressures for efficiency and quality control (time). Spaeth (2018) argues that there is a lack of attention directed towards the emotional investment on the part of colleagues when providing feedback.

Here, I bring my voice to this less explored side by exploring audio feedback as a performance of emotional labour, based on my experience of trialling of audio feedback as a means of providing feedback to university students through Turnitin on the Virtual Learning Environment. This trial was initiated by colleagues at a departmental level as a possible means of addressing the National Student Survey category of ‘perception of fairness’ in relation to feedback. I decided to reflect on my experience of providing audio feedback as part of a reflective practice module ‘FLEX’ that I was undertaking at the time whilst working towards my Masters in Higher Education.

When providing audio feedback, I felt more confident in the mark and feedback I awarded students, when compared to written feedback. I felt my feedback was less likely to be misinterpreted. This is because, when providing audio feedback, I simultaneously scrolled down the script, using it as an oral catalyst. I considered my audio feedback included more examples than conventional written feedback to illustrate points I made. This overcomes some perceived weaknesses of written feedback: that it is detached from the students’ work (McFarlane and Wakeman, 2011).

In terms of my perceived drawbacks of audio feedback, whilst some academics have found audio feedback to be quicker to produce than written feedback, I found audio feedback was more time-consuming than traditional means; a mistake in the middle of a recording meant the whole recording had to be redone. I toyed with the idea of keeping mistakes in, thinking they would make me appear more human. However, I decided to restart the recording to appear professional. This desire to craft a performance of professionalism may be related to my positionality as a fairly young, female, academic with feelings of imposter syndrome.

I work on compressed hours, working longer hours Monday-Thursday. Working in this way, I have always undertaken feedback outside of core hours, in the evening, due to the relative flexibility of providing feedback (in comparison to needing to be in person at specific times for teaching). I typically have no issue with this. However, providing audio feedback requires a different environment in comparison to providing written feedback:

Providing audio feedback in the evenings when my husband is trying to get our two children to sleep, and with two dogs excitedly scampering around is stressful. I take myself off to the bedroom and sit in bed with my dressing gown on, for comfort. Then I suddenly think how horrified students may be if they knew this was the reality of providing audio feedback. I feel like I should be sitting at my desk in a suit! I know they can’t see me when providing audio feedback, but I feel how I dress may be perceived to reflect how seriously I am taking it. (Reflective diary)                     

I work in an open plan office, with only a few private and non-soundproof pods, so providing audio feedback in the workspace is not easy. Discussing her ‘marking life’, Henderson-Brooks (2021:113) notes the need to get the perfect environment to mark in: “so, I get the chocolates (carrots nowadays), sharpen the pens (warm the screen nowadays), and warn my friends and relatives (no change nowadays) – it is marking time”. Related to this, I would always have a cup of tea (and Diet Coke) to hand, along with chocolate and crisps, to ‘treat’ myself, and make the experience more enjoyable.

When providing feedback, I felt pressure not only to make the right kind of comments, but also in the ‘correct’ tone, as I reflect below:

I feel a need to be constantly 100% enthusiastic. I am worried if I sound tired students may think I was not concentrating enough marking their assessment; if I sound low mood that I am disappointed with them; or sounding too positive that it does not match their mark. (Reflective diary)

I found it emotionally exhausting having to perform the perfect degree of enthusiasm, which I individually tailored to each student and their mark. This is confounded by the fact that I have an autoimmune disease and associated chronic fatigue which means I get very tired and have little energy. Consequently, performing my words / voice / tone is particularly onerous, as is sitting for long periods of time when providing feedback. Similarly, Ekinsmyth (2010) says that colleagues in her study felt a need to be careful about the words used in, and the tone of, audio feedback. This was exemplified when a student had done particularly well, or had not passed the assignment.

Emotions are key to the often considered mundane task of providing assignment feedback to students (Henderson-Brooks, 2021).  I have highlighted worries and anxieties when providing audio feedback, related to the emotional labour required in performing the ‘correct’ tone; saying appropriate words; and creating an appropriate environment and atmosphere for delivering audio feedback. I recommend that university colleagues wishing to provide audio feedback to students should:

  1. Publicise to students the purpose of audio feedback so they are more familiar with what to expect and how to get the most out of this mode of feedback. This may alleviate some of the worries of colleagues regarding how to perform for students when providing audio feedback.
  2. Deliver a presentation to colleagues with tips on how to successfully provide audio feedback. This may reduce the worries of colleagues who are unfamiliar with this mode of feedback.
  3. Undertake further research on the embodied, emotional and affective experiences of academics providing audio feedback, to bring to the fore the underexplored voices of assessors, and assist in elevating the status of audio feedback beyond being considered a mere administrative task.

Samantha Wilkinson is a Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is a Doctoral College Departmental Lead for PhDs in Education. Prior to this, she was a Lecturer in Human Geography at the same institution. Her research has made contributions regarding the centrality of care, friendship, intra and inter-generational relationships to young people’s lives. She is also passionate about using autoethnography to bring to the fore her experiences in academia, which others may be able to relate to. Twitter handle:@samanthawilko


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‘To diary or not to diary’? – lessons learned from the SRHE workshop ‘Using Diary Method in Social Research’

by Panagiota (Peny) Sotiropoulou

At the beginning of February 2024, I attended the in-person workshop on Using Diary Method in Social Research, organised by the SRHE and facilitated by Dr Emily Henderson, Dr Zoe Baker and Dr Ahmad Akkad.

Figure 1: Dr Zoe Baker presenting a group task during the workshop

As a reflective, life-long learner, I think there is no bigger satisfaction than sharing lessons learned from attending professional development opportunities like this with a wider audience. So, in this blog, I will present my main takeaways from the day and how I adapted what I learned to fit the diary method in a recent collaborative research proposal submitted for funding.

Using diary as a research method – my main takeaway messages from attending the workshop

  1. Using diary as a method for social research is perceived as a bit mysterious, “somewhat off the beaten path” (Hyers, 2018:vi), as it is still an underused method, without a big body of literature surrounding it. For this reason, researchers should be prepared to receive some initial hesitation from potential participants and be familiar with relevant existing studies that have used this method, to support and argue in favour of their choice.
  2. There is a difference between unsolicited (those pre-existing the research) and solicited diaries (those created for the purpose of the research). However, only the latter type of diary is relevant to researchers who are interested in incorporating diary entries in their research design to explore current topics.
  3. Simpler forms of diaries (e.g. paper templates or online documents) seem to work better than specialist diary apps in terms of facilitating participant engagement and retention.
  4. Two of the main advantages of the diary method are that it can provide access to settings that are hard for the researcher to enter (e.g. school classrooms) and that it provides the participants with the space, time and agency to think and decide what they want to share with the researcher, unlike an interview setting, for example, where participants have to react on the spot.
  5. Diaries are a good way to research marginalised groups and sensitive topics and provide a perfect way to explore lived, micro-level experiences.
  6. The success of a diary study is inextricably linked to the provision of clear instructions on when entries should be made and what participants should cover in those. In terms of the timing of entries, the main distinction is between interval-based (regular records kept over specific time intervals) and event-based sampling (records made every time the participant experiences something that qualifies as an event for the purpose of the research).
  7. The diary requirements should be in balance with participants’ availability, so that the diary does not become an onerous task.
  8. Diary studies come with a relatively high administrative burden, as researchers are required to sustain communications with their participants throughout the project to retain them and to monitor that their engagement is appropriate.
  9. Participation in diary studies might result in increased reactivity/self-awareness for participants (i.e. participants realise their circumstances better after keeping a diary). This might be either positive or negative, depending on whether or not participants take steps towards positive change.

And now what? Adapting diary methods to my research practice

At the time of the workshop I was involved in developing a collaborative research bid to examine the lived experiences of minority ethnic staff and students in Welsh higher education institutions (HEIs). My participation in the workshop consolidated my thinking that including diary elements in this project would be a perfect fit, for several reasons:

  1. Diaries would put the voices of minority ethnic staff and students at the forefront. By providing them with the space to create their own narratives, participants would be empowered to use their diaries to produce authentic and honest representations of their lived experiences.
  2. Diaries would allow participants to record their experiences in real time, providing detailed and context-rich data. This immediacy could capture nuances that might be missed by standalone interviews or surveys.
  3. The flexibility of diaries in terms of format (e.g. allowing for the inclusion of both written and audiovisual elements) and the ease with which they can be tailored to be submitted online would enable participants to adapt their diaries to what best suits their preferences and availability.
  4. Diary entries can complement other research methods, such as interviews and focus groups, to provide holistic exploration of lived experiences, with the latter acting as debrief opportunities to further explore the former.

As this bid came in response to a public tender there was a strict budget, a defined timeline and some specific methodologies requested that needed to be met for our proposal to be competitive. Diary methods were not amongst those requested and the time required for managing participants in such studies as well as analysing relevant findings made the inclusion of a pure diary study unsuitable for this specific bid. However, recognising the unique potential that incorporating diary elements would bring in exploring everyday experiences of minority ethnic staff and students, we decided to adopt participant-led multimedia-elicitation as a viable alternative.

Specifically, we thought that we would ask participants to use Padlet to capture multimedia depictions of their lived experiences accompanied by a short, explanatory commentary for their choice, with staff and students having separate Padlets to populate. We were particularly keen to allow for multimedia posts, so that we could capture more appropriately the various textures and facets comprising staff and students’ lived experience in HEIs (Metcalfe, 2016) (e.g. the sound of a spoken language -or the lack thereof- the places of inclusion/exclusion, as well as abstract concepts like ‘friendship’ etc).

Padlet perfectly served this purpose, as the platform affords for a variety of post types, such as audio recordings, website links, photos, songs. Padlet also allows for the creation of online peer communities, as it provides participants with the opportunity to interact with each other’s content. This further boosted our thinking to use the co-created Padlets of our participants as the basis for a subsequent online focus group discussion with them. This would enable us to better understand the meaning of the multimedia included as well as the interactions developed on the Padlets, as a means to shed more light on how these represent the lived experiences of minority ethnic staff and students.

Our choice was inspired by Keenan (2023), who reflects upon the diarying aspects of photo-elicitation, highlighting how this method is under-used in higher education and yet optimal for unravelling lived experiences. This is because it allows participants to be both creators and interpreters of the data, engaging them “in acts of diarying – both in terms of recording and reflexively interpreting everyday life” (Keenan 2023: 93).

Conclusions

Had I not attended the SRHE workshop, my understanding of the benefits of the diary method and its appropriateness for exploring lived experiences of marginalised communities in higher education would not have been so well-informed. It was learning from this workshop that prompted me to incorporate diary elements in the research bid on exploring minority ethnic staff and students’ lived experiences in higher education. Although the bid outcome is not yet published, I have already had a personal win, being able to include a new methodology in my practice.

So, many thanks to the SRHE for organising the session, to the facilitators for pitching it at such a perfect level, to my fellow participants, who were fully engaged and enriched the session even more by sharing their experiences, thoughts, and practices, and, last but not least, to my manager, who is always so supportive of me expanding my methodology repertoire and pursuing development opportunities. And here is my final lesson learned; do not hesitate to engage in professional development activities, as they are both educational and inspirational!

Dr Panagiota (Peny) Sotiropoulou is a mixed-methods researcher at Advance HE’s Insights Team. Her main interests lie in EDI considerations in HE, with a special focus on issues related to race and ethnicity. Her areas of specialisation involve mixed-methods research designs, impact and theory-based evaluations. Peny has extensive experience in programme evaluation, leading on Advance HE’s internal programme evaluations, in addition to those embedded to bespoke consultancy projects (read some of her recent work here). Peny has been involved with a wide array of projects, ranging from reviewing barriers to doctoral funding to institutional reporting and complaints processes. She has also been heavily involved in the production and dissemination of Advance HE’s annual Equality in Higher Education: Statistical Reports, as she loves to engage in outreach activities promoting EDI considerations to various audiences.

Get in contact with her on Twitter/X (@penpenwise) or LinkedIn.


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The increasing pressure on students after Covid-19

by Caroline Jones and Huw Bell

After the pandemic students are facing difficulties linked to health, wellbeing, finances and employment prospects; increased rents, housing shortages, zero hours contracts, the cost-of-living crisis and foodbank usage all of which can affect mental health and wellbeing. This prompted our systematic review article1, which examines topics of student engagement, belonging, alienation and resilience, and specifically identifies pressures on current HE students related to these domains.  The aim of the review was to understand better the tensions faced by HE students following their experiences of educational interruptions due to Covid-19.

Students report higher costs of living, impacting their wellbeing and ability to focus on their studies, with increased stress and a greater need to work to sustain themselves (Sutton Trust, 2023). For example, the Office for National Statistics (2023) reports some students having to skip meals due to the current UK financial crisis, and data from the Student Loans Company found that withdrawals from undergraduate courses in the two years post pandemic are increasing, averaging about 18,300 withdrawals compared to about 15,600 for the preceding three years (HM Government, 2023). While Covid-19 is not the sole cause of the cost of living crisis, it has exacerbated the pressure on students post-Covid. Many HE institutions report the effects of empty classrooms on student learning as they consider new ways of working to bring students back on campus after the pandemic (Dunbar-Morris, 2023).  About 1 in 4 students are at risk of dropping out of their university courses (Jones and Bell, 2024).

Our review found that despite the importance of HE to the development of an educated workforce (Brabner and Hillman, 2023; UPP Foundation and HEPI, 2022) and social mobility (Sutton Trust, 2021), there is a feeling that UK HEIs are moving in the wrong direction, with a sense that HE is decreasingly relevant to economic development (UPP Foundation and HEPI, 2022). We argue that institutions must develop resources and processes to help alleviate the burdens students face; the essential first step is understanding what those burdens are.

In our literature search both empirical and non-empirical data were screened for inclusion/exclusion from open and closed databases focusing on key search terms and dates. We also explored the literature relating to the personal, professional, academic, and societal pressures experienced by UK HE students. In total 59 publications were examined covering the period of the pandemic up to 2023. 

The key findings were:

  1. The effects of Covid-19 have increased pressure on HE students in multifaceted and interconnecting ways covering personal, professional, academic, and societal aspects of daily life. This directly influences student mental health and wellbeing and thus student engagement.
  2. Post-pandemic, students’ mental health and wellbeing are significantly affecting levels of resilience and coping strategies in personal, professional, academic, and societal aspects of daily life, with a direct impact on student retention.
  3. Issues facing the cohort of students currently at school, such as increased stress and anxiety, are likely to affect future HE attendance, engagement, sense of belonging, alienation and resilience.

The findings led to the following recommendations:

  1. Government and HEIs need to do more to address the macro, meso and micro effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the student population, identifying areas of increased pressure for HE students related to the personal, professional, academic, and societal aspects of students’ daily life, which directly influence student mental health and wellbeing and thus student engagement.
  2. Further focussed research is needed into post-pandemic institutional support systems and pedagogical strategies to recognise the support that has been implemented to improve students’ mental health and wellbeing.
  3. HEIs could examine the effects of stress and anxiety resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic for future students and consider strategic plans to continue to support a sense of belonging, and resilience practices to reduce alienation and increase student engagement and retention.
  4. HEIs could develop or use new conceptual tools and theories (for example: Jones, 2021; Jones, 2023), to better assess support needs for current and future students.
  5. Strategies to increase students’ resilience and coping skills post-pandemic aligned to personal, professional, academic, and societal aspects of daily life would significantly benefit mental health and wellbeing long term and thus student retention.

The results and recommendations from this systematic literature review are the scaffold for further qualitative research currently being undertaken into the pressures that HE students are experiencing in the wake of Covid-19. Staff and students are taking part in interviews and focus groups to explore the wider contextual issues associated with feelings of pressure relating to personal, professional, academic and societal influences in the post pandemic context. Many universities have invested in and extended their health, wellbeing and student services to support students, demonstrating the sector’s recognition of many of the challenges post Covid-19 students are facing. Our research will look at existing and improving support practices, systems and plans that HEIs are already implementing to support students in recognition of the many disruptions and challenges from the fall out of Covid-19.

Caroline Jonesis an applied social sciences teaching professional with extensive experience working in and across the education sector, including lecturing/programme leading in HE.  Currently employed as a Tutor based within the Health and Education Faculty at Manchester Metropolitan University.  Experience of External Examining and Peer Reviewing. Research interests include Leadership and management, risk, resilience and mental health, social mobility and social policy, widening participation and disadvantage. Originator of the Psychosocial and Academic Trust Alienation (PATA) theory. Twitter: @caroline_JonesSFHEA. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-jones-1bab40b3/

Dr Huw Bell is Reader in Teaching and Learning at Manchester Metropolitan University. Research focuses on teaching and learning L1 grammar in schools and universities in the UK, teachers’ attitudes to and beliefs about grammar and their impact on teaching, teachers’ enactment of the National Curriculum, and student life post-Covid. Email: h.bell@mmu.ac.uk.

  1. SRHE members can access the full article by logging in to www.srhe.ac.uk > My Account > Access to HE Journals > Taylor & Francis online > Perspectives ↩︎


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Balancing books and bills: an exploration of the hidden world of student workers

by Fabio R Aricò, Laura Harvey and Ritchie Woodard

The pattern is familiar across many universities: more and more students are asking to be excused from attending classes, submitting coursework, and even sitting examinations, because of work commitments. Not long ago, these requests would have been dismissed as feeble justifications and lack of planning but, in the face of the cost-of-living crisis, this rising phenomenon is a signal that students are struggling to make ends meet and that ad-hoc institutional responses have not yet addressed this challenge (Jones (2022), OfS (2023)).

During this period of high inflation, characterised by rampant housing costs and food prices, student finances are increasingly under pressure (Dickinson, 2023; Peachey, 2023). A larger number of students from different backgrounds are now seeking employment whilst studying for their degree. Universities and institutions have responded with a range of emergency measures, including financial support, housing aid, and foodbanks. Yet, there has been minimal adjustment in the way courses are taught or structured to accommodate part-time work, which has become a new normal for many learners (Blake, 2023).

Students undertaking part-time employment, during term or during vacation periods, is not new; in fact, it has long been encouraged by careers teams to facilitate the formation of soft-skills, broaden CVs, and boost chances for graduate success in the job market. Moreover, meaningful work experience or employment can be seen as critical for a number of professions – a mechanism to distinguish between graduates with the same 2:1 degree but with differing employability capital.

To what extent is student employment detrimental? The potential for harmful consequences of working whilst studying are clear – missing teaching sessions, not allocating enough time to independent learning, and increased stress levels, all have detrimental impacts on degree outcomes. However, there are also positive returns to student part-time work: developing key skills which are valuable for learning, as well as in the graduate labour market, such as problem solving, teamwork, communicating with customers and managing different priorities. The complex nature of this question is a key motivator for our ongoing research.

We conducted a small pilot survey at a mid-sized, mid-tier institution with the aim of gaining further understanding of the work-study trade-off faced by students. We hypothesised three main drivers for the decision to work whilst studying: (1) need to work, to have enough money to cover basics such as housing and food, (2) want to work, to pay for additional items such as holidays, and (3) invest into work, intended as seeking employment with the proactive aim to enhance employability skills. These complementary drivers are reflected in the range of jobs students reported having, including working for the university, retail, and hospitality.

Our pilot validated the presence of all these drivers in the sample we collected, as well as uncovering much more.

First of all, we observed that a non-negligible share of respondents reported working in offices, offering personal tutoring, and providing services as cleaners or in healthcare – roles not typically associated with student work in the past.

One of our findings sheds light on a socio-economic driver for employment. A significant number of questionnaire respondents claim that their student loan does not cover their essential expenses, or that their family network is not able to provide additional financial support at this time, evidencing a correlation between family financial background and the need for employment.

More interestingly, another finding reveals the presence of positive personal and social dimensions of student work. In fact, despite mentioning financial hardship, many students share positive feelings associated with the enjoyment of their part-time work as an ‘escape’ from studying, a means to fulfil their aspirations to rely less on family financial support, as well as an opportunity to socialise outside the academic environment. Although very preliminary, this result could highlight a shifting trend of no longer spending money on social activities, but rather earning money which comes with social interaction and, at a particular level, positive impact on mental health.

Whilst the phenomenon of working whilst studying has characterised the experience of generations of students, this practice has become much more common and widespread nowadays. Young people are increasingly prioritising earning versus studying in the face of financial hardship. In the absence of substantial policy reforms to student finance, this issue will remain present in the sector long after the cost-of-living crisis is resolved. In the face of these constraints, we suggest there is an opportunity for institutions to embed inclusivity and flexibility into their learning and teaching offer to minimise hardship for students, rather than opting for remedial support in the form of bursaries or food banks. In the long run, an evidence-informed flexible curriculum approach, which capitalises on the employability and social capital built through part-time work, could prove to be an effective approach in responding to economic and political instability, with a direct impact on the current and the future student experience.

The research is currently still underway and we are keen to connect with other researchers to expand the reach of this study. To find out more please contact the research team at cherpps@uea.ac.uk.

Prof Fabio R. Aricò is a Professor of Higher Education and Economics and the Director of the Centre for Higher Education Research Practice Policy and Scholarship at the University of East Anglia. You can find out more here and connect on twitter.

Dr Laura A. Harvey is a lecturer in Economics at Loughborough University. Her research is in the area of inequality and education. You can find out more here and connect on twitter.

Dr Ritchie Woodard is a lecturer in Economics at the University of East Anglia, with research interests in pedagogy, workplace wellbeing, automation & job satisfaction, and sports economics. You can find out more here and connect on twitter.


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It is not just about evaluation: the role of research in supporting widening participation

by Neil Raven

Much attention is now directed towards the role of evaluation in efforts to widening higher education participation. Indeed, the evaluation of interventions aimed at broadening HE access, and ensuring the success of those from under-represented groups once they are at university, is considered a priority by the Office for Students [OfS], (Blake 2022; OfS, 2023a; OfS, 2024).

Various guidance documents prepared by the HE regulator, both for individual higher education providers (OfS, 2023b), and Uni Connect, the government funded collaborative outreach programme (OfS, 2022), set out a rationale for this focus. ‘High quality evaluation,’ it is argued, ‘allows universities and colleges to understand the impact of their work to support students’, and to improve the effectiveness of this work (OfS, 2023a), and through sharing the findings of such investigations to ‘contribute to the wider evidence base’ (OfS, 2022, 12). In contrast, the role of research in widening participation [WP] receives far less attention and appears to be considered of less significance. Whilst ‘evaluation’ accumulates 42 references in the OfS’s advice to HE providers’ on their access and participation plans, research is mentioned 16 times (OfS, 2023b). More pointedly, the regulator’s guidance to Uni Connect partnerships states that ‘research is not one of the main aims or expected outcomes of funding’ (OfS, 2022, 13).

Yet, arguably, research has an equally important role to play in supporting and advancing the WP agenda. To appreciate this it is helpful to draw out the distinctions between research and evaluation. Perhaps the most fundamental of these relates to the broader remit that research has in ‘seeking new insights’ and making ‘new discoveries.’ Often this involves testing theories or hypotheses, and generating findings that have wider application (Anon, nd, np; Rogers, 2014). For some, research is viewed as ‘active and proactive’, whereas evaluation is ‘reactive’, in the sense of responding to an activity or practice (Anon, 2024, np).

Arguably, these distinct qualities mean that research has the potential to address a number of key WP challenges that remain unexplored in evaluations. For instance, providing insights into the reasons for the comparatively low rates of HE participation amongst particular groups of learners. These include young men from white, working class backgrounds, along with those taking vocational (applied general) courses and studying in further education colleges. All three are areas of current concern for those engaged in widening participation (Atherton and Mazhari, 2019; Raven, 2022; Raven, 2021).

In addition, it is by means of research that we can learn more about the longer-term impact of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis on the progression plans of those from more deprived neighbourhoods, as well as the reasons why some WP students appear more likely to drop out of university-level study. Research can also tell us about the post-graduation experiences of under-represented backgrounds – insights that are of central importance in presenting the case for HE.  Indeed, research can be viewed as complementary to evaluation. Research can provide insights and guidance on how a particular WP challenge can be addressed, with evaluation deployed to assess the effectiveness of the measures taken.

Whilst the OfS’s limited support (and funding) may explain some of the comparative neglect of research, the way much WP-related research (admittedly, this includes my own) has tended to be conducted and disseminated may also act as an impediment to recognising its true value. Therefore, besides calling on the OfS to acknowledge the role that research can play in supporting efforts to widen participation, I have five suggestions aimed at fellow researchers for enhancing the accessibility – and impact – of their work:

  • Share research findings with WP practitioners through talks and presentations, as well as more interactive workshops
  • Publish work in journals whose readership includes WP practitioners and policy makers
  • Explore opportunities to circulate findings in more widely read newsletters and e-bulletins
  • Engage directly with practitioners in exploring potential research topics
  • Consider the practical, real world application of research findings.

I would welcome readers’ views on these suggestions.

Neil Raven is an educational consultant and researcher in widening access. Contact him at neil.d.raven@gmail.com.

Acknowledgements – Thank you to Tony Hudson, Lewis Mates, Jessica Benson-Egglenton, Robin Webber-Jones and John Baldwin.


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For meta or for worse…

by Paul Temple

Remember the Metaverse? Oh, come on, you must remember it, just think back a year, eighteen months ago, it was everywhere! Mark Zuckerberg’s new big thing, ads everywhere about how it was going to transform, well, everything! I particularly liked the ad showing a school group virtually visiting the Metaverse forum in ancient Rome, which was apparently going to transform their understanding of the classical world. Well, that’s what $36 bn (yes, that’s billion) buys you. Accenture were big fans back then, displaying all the wide-eyed credulity expected of a global consultancy firm when they reported in January 2023 that “Growing consumer and business interest in the Metaverse [is] expected to fuel [a] trillion dollar opportunity for commerce, Accenture finds”.

It was a little difficult, though, to find actual uses of the Metaverse, as opposed to vague speculations about its future benefits, on the Accenture website. True, they’d used it in 2022 to prepare a presentation for Tuvalu for COP27; and they’d created a virtual “Global Collaboration Village” for the 2023 Davos get-together; and we mustn’t overlook the creation of the ChangiVerse, “where visitors can access a range of fun-filled activities and social experiences” while waiting for delayed flights at Singapore’s Changi airport. So all good. Now tell me that I don’t understand global business finance, but I’d still be surprised if these and comparable projects added up to a trillion dollars.

But of course that was then, in the far-off days of 2023. In 2024, we’re now in the thrilling new world of AI, do keep up! Accenture can now see that “AI is accelerating into a mega-trend, transforming industries, companies and the way we live and work…better positioned to reinvent, compete and achieve new levels of performance.” As I recall, this is pretty much what the Metaverse was promising, but never mind. Possible negative effects of AI? Sorry, how do you mean, “negative”?

It’s been often observed that every development in communications and information technology – radio, TV, computers, the internet – has produced assertions that the new technology means that the university as understood hitherto is finished. Amazon is already offering a dozen or so books published in the last six months on the impact of the various forms of AI on education, which, to go by the summaries provided, mostly seem to present it in terms of the good, the bad, and the ugly. I couldn’t spot an “end of the university as we know it” offering, but it has to be along soon.

You’ve probably played around with ChatGPT – perhaps you were one of its 100 million users logging-on within two months of its release – maybe to see how students (or you) might use it. I found it impressive, not least because of its speed, but at the same time rather ordinary: neat B-grade summaries of topics of the kind you might produce after skimming the intro sections of a few standard texts but, honestly, nothing very interesting. Microsoft is starting to include ChatGPT in its Office products; so you might, say, ask it to list the action points from the course committee minutes over the last year, based on the Word files it has access to. In other words, to get it to undertake, quickly and accurately, a task that would be straightforward yet tedious for a person: a nice feature, but hardly transformative. (By the way, have you tried giving ChatGPT some text it produced and asking where it came from? It said to me, in essence, I don’t remember doing this, but I suppose I might have: it had an oddly evasive feel.)

So will AI transform the way teaching and learning works in higher education? A recent paper by Strzelecki (2023) reporting on an empirical study of the use of ChatGPT by Polish university students notes both the potential benefits if it can be carefully integrated into normal teaching methods – creating material tailored to individuals’ learning needs, for example – as well as the obvious ethical problems that will inevitably arise. If students are able to use AI to produce work which they pass off as their own, it seems to me that that is an indictment of under-resourced, poorly-managed higher education which doesn’t allow a proper engagement between teachers and students, rather than a criticism of AI as such. Plagiarism in work that I marked really annoyed me, because the student was taking the course team for fools, assuming our knowledge of the topic was as limited as theirs. (OK, there may have been some very sophisticated plagiarism which I missed, but I doubt it: a sophisticated plagiarist is usually a contradiction in terms.)

The 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas in January 2024, was all about AI. Last year it was all about the Metaverse; this year, although the Metaverse got a mention, it seemed to rank in terms of interest well below the AI-enabled cat flap on display – it stops puss coming in if it’s got a mouse in its jaws – which I’m guessing cost rather less than $36bn to develop. I’ve put my name down for one.

Dr Paul Temple is Honorary Associate Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Studies, UCL Institute of Education.


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New evidence on the challenges and consequences of precarious work for university students

by Claudio Morrison and Janroj Yilmaz Keles

Introduction

A paper for the Symposium on ‘Inequalities in HE during Covid-19’ (SRHE Conference, 6 December 2023, Birmingham) provides new evidence on the ‘social suffering’ that university students endure due to precarious employment. Based on findings from the project ‘Learning from Labour: Critical Pedagogy for Working Students’ carried out at Middlesex University in 2022-2023, the study explores the educational and employment challenges faced by working students in UK post-92 universities (MDX News, 2023). Researchers Janroj Keles, Claudio Morrison and Parisa Dashtipour surveyed students at their university to understand their work experiences, challenges, employment rights awareness, and workplace difficulties. The preliminary findings of the research are summarised in an extensive report (Morrison, Dashtipour, and Keles, 2023).

Headline news has reignited debates about how financial hardship and challenging labour market conditions are squeezing students’ study-life balance, and alarmingly raised claims that part-time jobs may disproportionally disadvantage less privileged students (BBC News 2023). This directly contradicts widely held beliefs that these jobs offer valuable benefits of labour market flexibility and resilience. The Middlesex study reveals how thousands of university students in the workplace may regularly face discrimination, unpaid hours, threats of dismissal and shifts changing at short notice. The study further reveals a concerning lack of awareness among students regarding their employment rights, including benefits like maternity leave.

Academic debates and research background

The issue of ‘incompatibility’ between work and studying is neither new nor it is unique to the UK. In the UK conditions shifted significantly after the 1990s reforms with the creation of post-92 universities, the replacement of grants with loans and tuition fees and a diversified student body. Early research by Moreau and Leathwood (2006) on post-92 students concluded that students from working class background were disproportionately impacted by the lack of state support, as the ‘benefits of flexible labour predominantly accrue to the employer’ (2006: 37). Since austerity, even ‘white, middle-class students of traditional age’ face a ‘double deficit’ of financial shortfall and increasing pressure to gain employability skills (Hordósy, Clark and Vickers, 2018: 361). Studies covering EU countries show that around 70% of university students are active in the labour market above the accepted ten-hour threshold (Lessky and Unger, 2022). This ‘time-consuming’ employment is particularly prevalent among business students with first-in-family background; this is explained by increasing participation of underrepresented groups, greater appreciation of work experience and higher costs of living and is associated with higher drop-out rates. Research on student-workers by employment scholars remains limited (Rydzik and Bal, 2023). Several researchers highlight the multiple vulnerabilities experienced by students as a peripheral casualised workforce (Alberti et al, 2018; Ioannou and Dukes, 2021, Rydzik and Kissoon, 2022). Mooney (2016), for example, criticizes the fact that hospitality management takes a ‘dispassionate’ attitude toward casually employed students, failing retention. UK research further highlights sexist and discriminatory attitudes in the industry (Ineson et al, 2013; Maxwell and Broadbridge, 2014). Recent research identifies multiple effects of insecurity induced by precarity arguing for ‘student-workers as a conceptually distinct category of workers impacted in particular ways by labour flexibilization’ (Rydzik and Bal, 2023). However, there is some disagreement regarding the idea that all jobs involving precarious labour have negative outcomes. Other studies have questioned slippages between ‘the concepts of precarious work and precarious workers’ (Campbell and Price, 2016: 314) and between precarity as ‘waged work exhibiting several dimensions of precariousness [and], precarity [as] the detrimental effect of labour-market insecurity on people’s lives’ (Antonucci, 2018: 888). Students may avoid the short-term effects of insecure, low-paid jobs by exercising choice (Antonucci 2018). According to Whittard et al (2022: 762) ‘students possess skills attractive to employers, they may receive training and, in some cases, employment opportunities after graduation’. Additionally, Grozev and Easterbrook (2022: 259) argue that ‘the experience of working alongside studying can help to reaffirm students’ commitment to their studies and make them resilient learners.’ In sum, research so far has highlighted the economic and motivational pressures pushing low-income students towards low-paid/low skills precarious jobs. A limited amount of research has detailed both the potential incompatibilities between these jobs and education and the long-term risks associated with precarity. However, student agency and their ability to strategize remain contested. The Middlesex study contributes to these debates by adding evidence on the structural constraints that student workers face in the ‘labour process’ which encompasses work organisation, workplace power structures and ensuing social relations. This ultimately sheds light on what it truly means to be a precarious worker in this specific context.

Method

The research aimed to adapt and adopt critical pedagogy to the post-92 HE to raise the quality of learning experienced by working students and their agentic power in the workplace (Neary et al, 2014). Following an engaged research approach, the research used multiple methods, including a survey, interviews, in-class discussions and reflective essays. Academics across the University employed student-centred, research-engaged learning strategies to stimulate critical reflection on students’ work experiences and socio-political backgrounds (Dashtipour and Vidaillet, 2020). Their accounts illustrate work experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, the problems encountered, coping strategies and their knowledge of employment rights.

Findings

The research presents a picture in line with existing data on students’ employment during the pandemic. Its findings, however, suggest that the social suffering of student-workers is underestimated and consequently there is a stronger connection between ‘bad’ jobs and poor educational outcomes than previously thought. The study sample included females (61%) students living at home (34%), international/overseas students (44%), British (32%) and EU-settled residents (18%). Among surveyed students, 90% reported ‘not having enough money to live on without working’. In particular, fifty per cent work part-time and a third work in zero hours, freelance or informal jobs. Further, findings reveal how 68% of respondents have their work schedule changed at short notice, 28% do not always or ever see a payslip, 22% complain about unpaid extra work, and 17% claim some of their wages are paid cash-in-hand to avoid taxation. There is widespread evidence of discrimination and harassment and poor working conditions: almost 30% claim experiencing discrimination at work (almost 10% do so frequently), and 24% reported bullying; 22% claim threats of dismissal and 12% of disciplinary action; 20% reported accidents and injuries at work. Lack of knowledge of employment rights is one of the main reasons for difficult relationships with employers and it appears to exacerbate precariousness in the workplace.

Labour process analysis identifies the structural constraints that make such workplaces toxic and exploitative environments. Poignant respondents’ accounts describe a disorganised but highly exploitative work regime which relies on employees’ precarious conditions for its reproduction. Management strategies include lengthening of working time, deskilling and effort intensification combined with functional flexibility. Due to their short-term commitment, lack of experience and rights awareness as well as their desire for flexible hours, students become dependable workers. However, student-workers are no mere victims of unscrupulous employers and exploitative work designs. Resistance to unfair conditions also materialises either by withdrawing labour (turnover) or as workplace small-scale individual (foot-dragging, work-to-rule) and collective (solidarity, grievances) resistance.

The authors are concerned that these workplace issues may have an impact on students’ performance. Morrison, the project’s Principal Investigator, argues that student jobs are psychologically and physically taxing, as such immediately interfering with their ability to benefit from learning. Such experiences also lower their labour market expectations. The causes appear to lie in their lack of control over the conditions of their work and their poor awareness of labour rights. Precarious employment and exploitative business models make such problems a structural feature of these jobs. Keles, a co-investigator, exposes the dark side of student work for overseas students:

“Overseas students are trapped in a cycle of exploitation and bear the brunt of exploitative work. They typically work under unfavourable conditions, such as long hours – up to 30 per week – low pay and usually unsocial hours. Moreover, a significant proportion of oversees students reported that they have experienced bullying and undervaluing at these toxic work environments. In addition to increasing students’ vulnerability and mental health issues, these precarious employment conditions also lead to a number of other problems during their studies like poor academic performance”.

Drawing on extensive teaching experience, the researchers are adamant that these conditions may significantly contribute to low attendance, missing deadlines, requesting extensions, and even failing to turn in their assessments on time at the university.

Implications

Overall, the study emphasises that it is not poor education that allegedly prevents students from succeeding in the labour market, but rather it is the latter, due to the social suffering it causes, that prevents students from making the most of their learning opportunities.  Post-92 universities should not be unfairly blamed for failing students’ employability. However, recognition of the significant challenges students face should lead universities as well as students and educators to turn these struggles into an opportunity for collective, social and pedagogic change. Therefore, while advocating changes in employing sectors and in university funding to reduce students’ reliance on low pay/low skills jobs, the authors urge universities, unions, and civil society to act towards improving student’s agency and bargaining power by raising their labour and employment rights knowledge and awareness of workplace collective conditions.

Universities constantly and rightly encourage students to gain work experience to increase their employability, they should also support working students by including employment rights as part of the taught curriculum, providing topical advice services and offering additional well-being support. Initiatives like Hospitality Now (Lincoln University, 2024) or the Hertfordshire Law Clinic (Hertfordshire, 2024) show this is both a timely and feasible approach.

Anyone interested in viewing the report and/or sharing experiences of supporting working students is welcome to contact the research team C.Morrison@mdx.ac.uk, J.Keles@mdx.ac.uk.

Claudio Morrison is a Senior Research Fellow in Employment Relations and HRM at Middlesex Business School. Over the last 20 years he has carried out ethnographic research in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe investigating the working lives and resistance practices of labour migrants and industrial workers. Current work includes the development of alternatives to mainstream ethics and the promotion of critical pedagogies and reflective learning in western academia.

Janroj Yilmaz Keles is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law and Social Sciences, Faculty of Business and Law at Middlesex University, researching on peace and conflict, gender, political violence, migration and (digital) social movements. He is one of the co-investigators of GCRF HUB – Gender, Justice and Security and  the Nuffield Foundation funded  the Afghan resettlement in England: outcomes and experiences project. He served as an editor for the British Sociological Association’s journal Work, Employment and Society from 2018 until 2022.His monograph Media, Conflict and Diaspora (I.B. Tauris, 2015), was well received by the academic community.