Thank you to Ayşe Yavuz who is a communications volunteer for work group 3 and has written a reflective post following the Earning while learning webinar by Professor Kim Allen and Dr. Kirsty Finn. Dr. Ayşe Yavuz is an independent researcher holding a PhD in Educational Sciences from Aydın Adnan Menderes University, Türkiye, with a background in Psychological Counseling and Guidance.

“Earning while learning” (EwL) is commonly used to describe students’ participation in paid work alongside education. However, recent discussions within the Working Group 3 webinar, “Earning while learning: Student employment, careers guidance and employment rights literacy,” led by Prof. Kim Allen and Dr. Kirsty Finn, highlighted how student employment increasingly extends beyond employability or gaining “experience” to involve low pay, insecurity, weak labour protections, and gendered inequalities. The webinar also emphasised that understanding student employment requires attention not only to employability, but also to employment rights literacy and the unequal power relations shaping young people’s working lives. The webinar drew on findings from the ESRC-funded project L-earning: Rethinking Young Women’s Working Lives, a three-year mixed-methods study conducted across England with young women in education and employment (Allen, Cohen, et al., 2025). Combining national datasets, focus groups with 83 young women students aged 14-23, and interviews with 76 young women aged 23-29 working in feminised sectors, the research examined how early work experiences shape understandings of labour, employability, and future working lives.

Across the webinar, student employment emerged not as a temporary or secondary activity, but as a form of work often characterised by low wages, instability, limited bargaining power, and widespread insecurity. This discussion was closely linked to Zhong et al.’s (2025) description of student employment as “equally bad,” where the absence of a significant gender pay gap reflects not equality, but the concentration of young workers in similarly low-paid and insecure sectors such as retail and hospitality. Rather than framing student work simply as an individual choice or a stepping stone into the labour market, the research suggests that these experiences shape early understandings of work itself, including what young people come to normalise, tolerate, and expect from working life (Allen, Brouwers, et al., 2025). This becomes particularly visible in how participants describe the relationship between labour and value:

“Tell me why my hourly wage was less than one of their croissants. I’m sorry; that is actually insane.” (Aria, as cited in Allen, Brouwers, et al., 2025)

Beyond questions of pay, the webinar also drew attention to how unequal workplace relations can shape young women’s confidence, well-being, and sense of agency. Experiences of harassment, discrimination, and failed attempts to challenge workplace problems were often described not as isolated incidents, but as conditions that became difficult to contest or even articulate within everyday working life (Allen, Cohen, et al., 2025):

“I just wanted to get out of there and never have anything to do with them ever again… my mental health was rock bottom… It’s taken me a long time to get my confidence back up again after that.” (Faiza, 27, youth worker as cited in Allen, Cohen, et al., 2025).

Although the webinar and associated research focused on England, similar themes also emerge in Türkiye. A qualitative study conducted with 67 working university students found that insufficient family support, scholarships, and student loans pushed many students into low-paid and precarious work while studying (Açık Turguter, 2025). Reflecting the physical exhaustion and psychological strain associated with student employment, one student explained:

“I work 45 hours a week. I work as a customer representative, but I also do everything from arranging shelves to working at the checkout. I feel physically tired, have varicose veins across my legs, and sometimes do not feel psychologically well either.” (K61, female, age 20, translated from Turkish, as cited in Açık Turguter, 2025).

These experiences also resonate with broader international patterns. OECD data indicate that combining education with employment has become increasingly common across many countries, often shaped by financial pressure alongside career development (OECD, 2025). Similarly, EUROSTUDENT 8, based on student survey data from 25 countries in the European Higher Education Area, reports that 59% of students work during the lecture period and that female students work more often than their male counterparts. Importantly, 29% of students state that they could not afford to study without paid work, while dropout intentions are more common among students working more than 20 hours per week (Mandl & Menz, 2024). Taken together, these findings suggest that “earning while learning” increasingly reflects financial necessity and unequal working conditions rather than simply employability-building.

As “earning while learning” becomes an increasingly common part of students’ lives, how do these experiences resonate within your own context, and how visible are they within career guidance and employment rights discussions?

References

Açık Turguter, E. (2025). Working university students and student poverty: The case of Mugla Sitki Kocman University. Academic Elegance, 12(28), 600–626. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.58884/akademik-hassasiyetler.1600296

Allen, K., Brouwers, L., Cohen, R. L., Finn, K., Hardy, K., Kill, C., & Zhong, M. R. (2025). Earning while Learning: Student employment (Research Briefing for Employers and Industry). University of Leeds, University of Manchester and City St George’s, University of London. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.48785/100/327

Allen, K., Cohen, R. L., Finn, K., Hardy, K., Brouwers, L., Kill, C., & Zhong, M. (2025). L-earning: Rethinking Young Women’s Working Lives – Final report. University of Leeds, University of Manchester and City St George’s, University of London. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.48785/100/390

Mandl, S., & Menz, C. (2024). Students’ employment and internships. In K. Hauschildt (Ed.), Social and economic conditions of student life in Europe. EUROSTUDENT 8 Synopsis of indicators 2021–2024. https://doi.org/10.3278/6001920ew006

OECD. (2025). Education at a Glance 2025: OECD Indicators. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1787/1c0d9c79-en

Zhong, M. R., Cohen, R. L., Allen, K., Finn, K., Hardy, K., & Kill, C. (2025). Equally bad, unevenly distributed: Gender and the ‘black box’ of student employment. The British Journal of Sociology, 76(4), 828–840. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.13210