Placement students deserve the same protections as workers

Students are experiencing time poverty as they try to balance study and paid work – increasingly as a necessity, not a choice.

Further research from our Student Working Lives project shows how managing inflexible placements alongside existing commitments can force students into choosing between financial security and their course.

Placements are an essential part of many university courses, giving students hands-on experience that can't be replicated in a lecture hall.

But the inflexible structure and heavy time demands of some placements – particularly in nursing, midwifery, and social care – can put unreasonable pressure on students. While unpaid, these positions often require the equivalent of full-time work hours and may come with additional costs like uniforms, travel, or even relocation.

Numerous campaigns are calling for changes to how student placements work – particularly medical placements – including how they're supervised and supported and whether students should receive payment.

Our research showed how placements can pile yet more strain on top – students are often required to juggle part-time employment, coursework, and placement commitments just to stay afloat financially, creating severe time poverty that eats into wellbeing, family life, and academic performance.

As one student put it:

I'm in quite a fortunate position that financially, I don't feel that I need to pick up shifts while I'm on placement or if I've got an assignment due or something. So I feel quite lucky that if I've had an assignment coming up, I haven't picked up shifts for like two weeks before that to make sure I've got enough time to get everything sorted. And when I'm on placement, I don't pick up shifts.

The point is stark – students with financial security can afford to prioritise their studies and placements, while those without it simply can't reduce their working hours.

Running on empty

For many students, paid work isn't a choice. Some participants reported limited success in pushing their working hours to evenings and weekends to fit in the demands of study, work, and placement – but even when students are managing on paper, the question is what it's costing them.

Legal protections for workers cap the working week at 48 hours – a limit that also applies to those on work-study apprenticeships. But students completing placements don't get any equivalent safeguard to balance their placement and paid work hours. 12-hour shifts are common, and when combined with academic responsibilities and employment, total weekly hours can blow past safe limits by a significant margin – compounding the time poverty students already face.

The outcomes are bleak:

It's not just academic time, it's also literal work time. At one point, I was doing nearly 75-hour weeks with my job and placement. I've been burnt out, I've been really ill, and I've been admitted to hospital.

You know, the last thing you want to do on a Saturday morning, if you've happened to have a day off placement, is to have to then get up and go to work and perform. But I've had to do that. I've missed stuff with the kids.

This time poverty leads to burnout, depression, and – for students with families – guilt about missing out on family life. Nobody should have so little free time that it puts their mental or physical health at risk.

What has to give

Placements are essential for training future professionals and supporting the NHS and social services – but the current model hits students from less financially secure backgrounds hardest. NHS bursaries exist, but they don't address time poverty – students are still working excessive hours to meet their placement requirements and make ends meet.

There are several things that could make mandatory placements more accessible.

Universities should – and often do – offer financial support such as hardship funds, travel bursaries, and paid placement schemes. These need to be well-publicised, keep pace with rising living costs, and reflect the extra expenses students face when placements take place off-site or outside term time. Employers hosting placement students should also contribute by covering basic expenses or providing stipends.

Course structures need greater flexibility so students can balance placement hours, assessments, and essential part-time work. Stronger, ongoing collaboration between universities and placement providers is needed to ensure that placements remain genuine learning experiences rather than simply filling staffing gaps. Universities and placement providers should also consider students' wider time demands and offer alternatives such as consistent timetables, limits on consecutive placement days, and "long and thin" or flexible placement models that spread required hours more evenly.

Wider protections are also needed. Many placements mirror full-time work, yet students lack the safeguards provided through working-time regulations. Policies should ensure that combined study, placement, and paid work don't push students beyond safe limits. When placements occur outside term time or away from university locations, adequate funding for travel and accommodation should be guaranteed.

Placements should prepare students for their future careers – not push them towards exhaustion. Tackling time poverty isn't just about fairness – it's about protecting the wellbeing of the people we're relying on to staff our public services.