After recently reading an article that said students were turning to prostitution, stripping and becoming high street gigolos in order to survive financially at university, I was shocked; then I thought through the logistics and it unfortunately made sense.
The average student spends around £1000 on living expenses a term, and that excludes things like rent and bills. Figures released by the Labour Force Survey state that ‘the number of full-time students with jobs rose by 54% in the last 10 years to 630,718’. However, for many students, due to the high demand for jobs, it is impossible to find one, and if they do, some find that their standard of academic work begins to suffer. Students at Oxbridge are discouraged from getting jobs during term time, and are only encouraged to get jobs offered by the University itself. Even these are carefully monitored to make sure they do not interfere with academic work.
After realising that, by going into occupations mentioned before, students are earning hundreds per night, I can’t help but wonder why people are in any way shocked by this; financially it makes sense.
Already, our generation knows of the economic downturn that awaits us. It’s shown through the lack of summer jobs available, the difficulty of getting internships and work experience, and that awkward moment when you realise it’s a choice of spending your student loan on food and drink, or a new pair of shoes because yours are showing more foot than leather. Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister said ‘there is nothing new in students taking term-time jobs’. To Bill Rammell I say this; we are now part of a generation which is expected to be the best. We are expected to get those 2:1s and firsts, whilst immersing ourselves in societies and keeping up a good social life.
It is impossible for many of us to contemplate keeping up a term-time job without letting one of these other activities slide, and due to the already competitive nature of securing jobs, it is essential that out CVs look as good as possible in order to get our foot on that already rickety career ladder.
Now, I’m not saying that people should grab their tightest, most revealing outfit and take to the streets. What I’m saying is more directed to the people at the top; the people in Government and the officials in education, and to those disapproving onlookers who tut and shake their heads when they hear the words ‘student debt’. In a country where inflation has caused the tiniest of luxuries, such as a pint, to become money drains, it is unlikely that anyone will escape debt, let alone students. This means that universities and the government have to use their resources to provide every undergraduate an opportunity which isn’t just luck of the draw.
We are all going to come out of higher education with some sort of debt, ranging from high to low, and the chances that we have been organised enough or even able to pay it off through our time at university is unimaginable. We need to know that all our hard work will pay off, and have the financial security that was promised to us when we worked hard at school to get into a good university, to get a good degree and then a good job. This was what we were all taught and promised, and yet as we can see it is not always the case. In most firms now days there are 600 people applying for five positions.
At the University of York we’re fairly lucky; we have the chance to meet people in careers we eventually want to go into, and as long as we use this opportunity to our full advantage we will hopefully be okay. But at the same time getting onto that career ladder has now become like a battlefield for all of us. A battlefield full of suits and briefcases.