Long hours and poor working conditions hit students’ outcomes hard

Bridget Phillipson’s speech to Labour Conference this year signalled that she’d like students to be learning more and working less.

But students can’t afford to work less, and there’s now new evidence showing what that’s costing them academically.

The Student Working Lives report, published by HEPI with the University of Lancashire and three partner institutions, provides something that previous polling (including our own Belong survey work with Cibyl) couldn’t – linked institutional data on actual academic performance and attendance.

And the findings should worry anyone who cares about widening participation, student outcomes, or the basic functioning of mass higher education.

The headline is that students working under 20 hours per week are 20 per cent more likely to achieve “good” honours (a 2:1 or first for undergraduates, merit for postgraduates) than those working over 20 hours.

The attendance data tells the same story. Students working between one and nine hours per week attend 64 per cent of their compulsory timetabled contact hours. That drops to 58 per cent for those working 10 to 19 hours, and falls to 54 per cent for those working over 20 hours.

As the report notes, while overall attendance levels are concerningly low across the board (pointing to what it diplomatically calls “a broader engagement crisis in higher education”), paid work adds an additional barrier. And when you’re already starting from a 64 per cent attendance baseline, every additional percentage point lost matters.

The engagement problem then extends beyond attendance. The work asked students to rate their sense of belonging at university on a five-point scale, with an overall average of 3.4. Those working 20-plus hours score 3.1 – below the overall average and approaching the neutral midpoint of 3. That might not sound dramatic, but in a system where belonging is a strong predictor of retention, every tenth of a point matters.

Meanwhile students working over 20 hours per week are 40 per cent likely to have considered withdrawing from their course, compared to 24 to 25 per cent for those working fewer hours. That’s a 15 percentage point gap. And the report notes, this likely understates the problem because the survey can’t capture those who’ve already withdrawn due to excessive work hours.

Not just hours

Helpfully, the report moves beyond simply confirming what we already suspected about working hours. It uses relative risk ratios to examine how different aspects of job quality associate with academic outcomes, and the patterns are astonishing.

Students who work from home are 16 per cent more likely to be on track for good honours. Those with managers who provide good direction are 10 per cent more likely. Students in roles they describe as “achievable” are nine per cent more likely.

Meanwhile those working night shifts are seven per cent less likely to achieve good grades, while those in jobs that cause or worsen stress, anxiety or depression are two per cent less likely.

The report is careful to note these are associative rather than causal findings – correlation is not causation, folks. But as it observes:

…the consistency of the patterns across institutions strengthens our argument that job quality is a critical, and often overlooked, determinant of student success.

It’s a departure from policy conversations that tend to focus almost exclusively on limiting working hours. If you’re a student in a supportive, flexible role that aligns with your skills and allows you to work from home, you’re substantially more likely to succeed academically than someone working fewer hours in a poor-quality job with night shifts and no flexibility.

The cost-of-living trap

The analysis of how students respond to rising costs reveals a vicious circle. When asked how they’re coping with increased expenses, 77 per cent reported making one or more changes to their work patterns. Thirty-nine per cent are working more hours than usual in their main job, 32 per cent are looking for better-paid roles or promotions, 21 per cent are working more than one job.

The problem is that these entirely rational responses to financial pressure make academic outcomes worse. Students who increase their hours in their main job are seven per cent less likely to achieve a good honours degree. Those seeking better-paid roles or promotions are 10 per cent less likely. In contrast, students who reduce their physical presence at work are 16 per cent more likely to be on track for good honours, while those who make no changes to their work patterns are 12 per cent more likely to succeed.

Both this report and our work a year or so ago found remarkably similar patterns on the basics. Students are working an average of 17 hours per week in paid employment during term time. When you add 10 hours of class attendance, 18 hours of independent study, and time spent travelling to work and university, you’re looking at 50 hours per week. That’s substantially more than the 41.5-hour average for UK full-time workers (36.5 hours working plus 4.9 hours commuting).

The motivation is overwhelmingly financial necessity. Student Working Lives found 66 per cent work to cover basic living costs, with 20 per cent doing so to pay tuition fees. In our polling, two-thirds reported working to pay for essential bills – we’re some distance from the cliche of students working for beer money.

And the sectors haven’t changed – retail and hospitality dominate, with health and social care making up a significant chunk (almost one in five international students in our sample were working in health and social care).

These aren’t necessarily bad jobs, but as the notes, they’re “characterised as ‘low-pay sectors’, but with high social value and perceived flexibility.” And of course it’s retail and hospitality where the bulk of job losses from the labour market have been experienced over the past couple of years.

Who’s hit hardest

The averages obscure important differences. The analysis of commuter students (45 per cent of their sample) reveals a group working three extra hours per week compared to non-commuters, and spending more time travelling. Yet paradoxically, commuter students working fewer than 10 hours achieve the highest grades in the sample (73 per cent), though their performance drops sharply beyond that threshold. They also consistently attend fewer classes – not because they’re working that much more, but because the combined burden of work and travel makes attendance harder.

The international student picture is shaming. They work less on average – 14 hours per week compared to 18 for home students – largely because visa restrictions cap them at 20 hours during term time. But the quality of their employment is substantially worse.

International students are less likely to report their work as meaningful (27 per cent versus 38 per cent for home students), productive (35 per cent versus 46 per cent), or achievable (26 per cent versus 47 per cent). They’re less supported by managers (22 per cent versus 33 per cent) and colleagues (26 per cent versus 42 per cent).

They face lower quality work, limited workplace support, fewer opportunities to develop relevant skills, combined with the pressures of attendance monitoring. The 20-hour cap might limit total hours, but it doesn’t address the quality problem – and may even trap students in worse jobs because they can’t access better opportunities that might require more flexibility – or traps them in the grey economy where there are no rights at all.

The institutional averages also mask significant subject-level variations. Students in Nursing and Midwifery, Health and Social Work, and Arts and Media face some of the most demanding schedules, with total weekly workloads well above the 50-hour average. Medical students, often from more affluent backgrounds, work fewer paid hours but spend more time on independent study and report the highest travel to university times. Veterinary Medicine students, also typically from privileged backgrounds, have the lowest class attendance and total workload overall.

It should have real implications for curriculum design. As one Social Work student explained:

For Social Work, we go on placement. So it’s not a paid job, but it’s kind of a learning like learning practice as part of the job, I had to think about balancing work and studies because I still go on school, I still do school work, I still completed assignments, I still go to classes while on placement… I had the pressure of my dissertation, the placement, school work and everything, so I felt really overwhelmed.”

Students with caring responsibilities face an even more extreme picture – an average of 57 hours per week when combining paid work, study, classes and travel. And that doesn’t include the actual caregiving hours. As one participant said:

It’s a balancing act, because I wasn’t just studying full-time and then working part-time and doing 20 hours a week. I’m also a single mum… I had to defer my modules because I could not submit the work. I thought, this is not happening.

The deprivation surprise

One of the more surprising findings involves the Index of Multiple Deprivation. Conventional wisdom suggests students from more deprived backgrounds work substantially more hours. The data shows something more nuanced – working hours are broadly consistent across all deprivation quintiles at 16 to 18 hours per week.

What differs is attainment and attendance. Students from the most deprived quintile (IMD 1) achieve average marks of 60 per cent and attend 55 per cent of classes. Those from the least deprived quintile (IMD 5) achieve 67 per cent and attend 66 per cent. So while everyone’s working similar hours, the outcomes diverge – suggesting that students from more advantaged backgrounds have other forms of support (financial cushions, family help, better prior preparation) that buffer the impact of work.

This matters for policy because it suggests that simply capping hours or limiting work won’t address the inequality if students from disadvantaged backgrounds still need to work those hours to survive. The structural inadequacy of maintenance support hits everyone, but its effects are mediated by background advantage.

In this work, 38 per cent of students were on zero-hours or casual contracts (we found almost half). Both surveys captured the precarity – students not knowing if they’ll be needed until the last minute, often after incurring the cost and time of travel. One student in this sample described travelling to a warehouse job only to be told on arrival they were “spare” staff and had to go home, losing £24 in travel costs without any work:

The supply of work, the extent to which students rely on it to live, and the precarious nature of the contracts which surround it are conditions ripe for exploitation, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is exactly what is happening for significant numbers of students.

The government’s problem

Which brings us back to that pledge about students learning more and working less. The report is unflinching about the structural driver:

The inadequacy of state-funded student maintenance support for English students.

HEPI cites its own work on the Minimum Income Standard for Students – £21,126 needed outside London (£24,900 inside London) for a socially acceptable minimum standard of living in first year. That’s an annual shortfall of just under £10,582 versus maximum available support. And the household income threshold for maximum support in England has been stuck at £25,000 since 2008 – inflation has eroded its real value by 40 per cent:

You’ve now got a situation where a single parent earning minimum wage is expected to support their adult student child away from home.

For international students, it’s worse. The proof of funds required by UK Visas and Immigration is benchmarked against the maximum English maintenance loan – which everyone acknowledges is insufficient. As another stakeholder noted:

It’s closer to £18,000. So we know there’s a lot of international students who are working who might not have done so in the past.

There’s a whole bunch of recommendations – on curriculum and timetabling, provide timetables and assessment deadlines well in advance, stop cancelling or moving lectures (which damages students’ reputation for reliability with employers), and consider block delivery models that allow students to focus on one module at a time.

There’s also a strong push for universities to create more on-campus employment opportunities – something students in our work last year repeatedly called for. As one put it:

Make more jobs available with the university as they pay fairly and working conditions are always good.

Another:

Better career options within the students’ union… outside of hospitality and elected student officials.

Student Working Lives goes further, arguing for universities to reposition careers services to support students throughout their studies, not just focus on graduate employment. Given that only seven per cent of students in the sample found their jobs through careers services or job fairs, while 43 per cent used employer websites and 27 per cent relied on friends and family (a resource that isn’t evenly distributed), there’s clearly a gap.

Perhaps most significantly, the report suggests the Office for Students should recognise paid work as a risk factor in its Equality of Opportunity Risk Register. As one stakeholder participant argued:

It’s a very clear risk to students’ education that needs to be acknowledged and on university’s radars… I think it is worth the Office for Students ensuring that they’re holistically looking at this, identifying that excessive hours of part-time work or low-quality part-time work are a risk.

And as another stakeholder put it:

If students can’t survive, then universities can’t survive. Those two things don’t go without each other.

Double whammy

Taken together, our polling plus these new findings paint a bleak picture. Our work captured the lived experience – the exploitation, the poor treatment, the impossible juggling act, the students’ own voices on what would help. HEPI’s institutional data quantifies the academic consequences – the attendance drops, the attainment gaps, the 20-hour threshold, the job quality effects.

What neither can do is conjure up the money to make it all go away. That would require the government to deliver on its pledge to make students work less by loaning them enough to live on. Until then, universities are left trying to retrofit a system designed for full-time study to a reality where “full-time” students are averaging 50-hour weeks, where a significant minority are working in jobs that actively harm their academic prospects, and where the alternative to working excessive hours isn’t more time studying – it’s not eating, not heating, or not studying at all.

As one participant observed:

We don’t have full-time students anymore. We may call them full-time on the system, but they’re not full-time students. They’re all part-time to varying degrees… And it’s actually almost ethically dubious. Too many are failing, so we are not helping them. Our mission is to support them, to flourish in education.

Who knows whether mooted, subject-specific maintenance grants will help, or whether a national Student Employment Charter would catch on. What we know won’t work is the extension of a system that has systematically underfunded students for a decade, and has produced these results. It will continue producing these results until someone changes it.