Vocational Voices: Season 1, Episode 6
Outcomes from combining work and tertiary study
Steve Davis (00:00)
Hello I'm Steve Davis. Welcome to this podcast for Australia's National Centre for Vocational Education Research.
What happens when tertiary or VET students hold down a job while undertaking study? Does it sabotage their academic outcomes or can it boost them? Can it open career opportunities or lead students down dead ends?
In the paper Outcomes from combining work and tertiary study, Dr Cain Polidano and Rezida Zakirova from the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, explore these questions and discover that the benefits arising from combining work and study do come with some risks.
I began by asking Cain if we know why so many students appear to be combining work and study in the first place.
Cain Polidano (00:55)
Steve, about 75% of students combined work in study. And look, it's really driven by economic imperative. I mean, these days a lot of kids, especially if they have to leave home and study in the cities, it's costly.
And so in a lot of cases, kids are working, combining work and study just to put themselves through. But at the same time, there's also an aspect of lifestyle involved. So even if you do come from a well-to-do background, you can't necessarily rely on your family to support your lifestyle. So they might be able to kick in to provide some help with paying rent. But for a lot of kids, being independent from their parents is important. So they do it also for lifestyle choice as well.
Steve Davis (01:45)
There's a strong suggestion in your paper that for many students, combining work and study actually leads to positive outcomes. Can you elaborate on some of these for us?
Cain Polidano (01:55)
Sure. In the first case, what we see is that kids who do work, if they can find a job that they would like as a career while they're studying, they seem to be more likely to complete. And this is true for both vocational education training students and also for higher education students. And what we suspect is that if you find a job that you'd like, it gives you an added incentive to be able to continue in that job when you finish study. And to do that, in a lot of cases, you need a qualification.
That's for education outcomes, but we also find that it's beneficial for employment outcomes as well. And it's not just restricted to kids who find a job that they would like as a career. So we find that even kids who work say as a barman pulling beers while they're studying an engineering qualification, they're still more likely to find employment when they finish. And the reason why that is, is that employers really value highly what are called general or soft skills. Sort of the ability to be able to get along with peers, work as a team, turn up on time. And those things are really hard for employers to measure. They can measure technical skills by looking at academic transcripts. That's really hard to measure those soft skills. So working in a job, even though it may not be related to the qualification, can still provide employment outcomes.
But we also find that employment outcomes are even greater if kids can find work that they would like as a career. And that's because as well as generating these general or soft skills, they're also generating job specific skills.
Steve Davis (03:37)
Of course, not all students juggle this work and study successfully. Is it the actual loading of work versus study as the main culprit? Or in other words, it's too much work a problem?
Cain Polidano (03:49)
Yeah, I think that it's true that the more time you spend in work, the less time you're going to devote to your study. And while we don't look at grades and we think that grades perhaps are impacted as well, we do know that it is the hours that that has an impact. So if you're working, say if you're studying full time and you're working up to eight hours, we estimate that it doesn't have any impact on your ability to manage work and study. If you're studying full time, you're working between 8 and 16 hours, that impacts your chances of completing by about five percentage points. So in other words, if you hadn't worked, the chances of completing are about 80%. But if you work between 8 and 16 hours, then your chances of completion fall to about 75%.
But those impacts ramp up as you work more hours. So what we find is that there's about 16% of all full time students working 24 hours or more, and that that reduces the chances of completion by about 14 percentage points.
But I should also say that while the hours do matter, we find that kids that have been in work or have a history of work experience are more likely to complete than not. And what we suspect is that by having some experience in work, maybe they're better able to manage the workload of study and work. But also it might be that they've built up a rapport with employers, which enables them to sort of negotiate more flexible working arrangements so that they can better manage the two workloads.
Steve Davis (05:36)
Now, it could be argued that there are differences between course content and durations between the VET and tertiary sectors, which allow for different tolerances, I suppose, for combining work and study. If you agree with that, did you note any distinct characteristics or outcomes between the two different student groups?
Cain Polidano (05:56)
It's probably fair to say that completion rates, while they’re often reported as being high in the vocational education training sector, we find that when you compare the completion rates between the two that actually the VET sector looks pretty good and the completion rates are comparable, if not greater than for higher education students.
And that's what we suspect. We suspect that it's probably got something to do with the fact that vocational courses are shorter. This is something that people need to keep in mind when they do comparisons between higher education and vocational education qualifications. If they were just to look at their raw data without controlling for all of the differences between these individuals, the VET sector completion rates look low. But when you actually compare like with like, we find that VET completion rates are comparable or if not a bit higher than higher education completion rates.
Steve Davis (06:54)
Did your research suggest a best practice when it comes to striking a sound balance between work and study?
Cain Polidano (07:00)
I think the one thing that we can take away from this study is that if you're going to combine work and study, which is the norm for most kids, the ideal balance is to try and work moderate hours, preferably less than three days a week of work, that is if you're studying full time. But also trying to find a job that's relevant to your interests and longer term career prospects.
Steve Davis (07:31)
And what about government and even the VET and the tertiary or higher education sectors themselves? What should they be taking note of do you think?
Cain Polidano (07:39)
There's definitely greater opportunities to try and develop partnerships with employers. There are experiences, especially in the VET sector, but probably less so in the higher education sector, where these arrangements can lead to internships, for instance. Where kids are placed with an employer over their summer break. And these sorts of arrangements can be win-win. So the employers can win because they get to assess the capacities of a range of different students, which may lead to a good match later on.
Because the graduate market it's a competitive market, and this is a way that employers can get ahead of the game. And also for students themselves. Being able to experience that sort of work environment can help them to decide what they want to do and also give them an advantage as well at the end. Having that experience can help them to improve their employment outcomes in the first few years.
Steve Davis (08:44)
Thanks for listening to this podcast produced by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research. To download your copy of Outcomes from combining work and tertiary study, go to www.ncver.edu.au