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The aim of this study is to investigate why students work during their degree programme, what influences their choice of employment and to examine students' perception of their ability to balance work and study.

A questionnaire was completed by 42 first‐ and second‐year students from a single degree programme at the end of Semester 2.

Within this group 83 per cent of students worked at some point during term‐time of their degree programme. In total 58 per cent of those students who worked did so to either cover or contribute to basic costs of living. While the majority of students felt they could balance work and study, half of all students questioned felt that working could have a negative impact on their degree classification.

This is a small study, limited to students from one degree programme. This study did not focus on the positive aspects offered to students by employment.

Students can no longer be considered as full‐time students, but rather as having dual roles, that of students and employees.

This study examines specifically the primary reason why students choose to, or have to, work during their university degree programme and adds to current knowledge of students' perception of the effect working has on their academic performance.

Increasing numbers of full‐time undergraduates are supplementing their income by seeking paid employment during term‐time. This article details the results of a survey of 368 students at Crewe + Alsager Faculty of Manchester Metropolitan University carried out in March 2000. The survey found that 59 per cent of students were working on a part‐time basis during term‐time, with a significant majority working for financial reasons. Although many students found working to be beneficial to their studies, the students are generally reluctant to work, with many stating that they would leave their paid employment if they could afford to do so. The majority of the employed students perceived that working had a detrimental effect on their academic studies and a quarter of them considered that they could not remain at university without their term‐time jobs.

Using a sample of 446 secondary students who had participated in a vocational education and training in school (VETiS) program, compares the experiences and perceptions of students who had undertaken a work placement with those who had not. Shows that students who had participated in work placement enjoyed the VETiS experience more than those who had not, and that the work placement had assisted them in their decision whether to stay at school or not. A factor analysis of results showed a factor associated with self‐confidence about employability, and a factor associated with assistance in achieving specific post‐school employment. Students who had completed a work placement were significantly higher on both these factors than students who had not. Results are consistent with other research in the field, and it is argued that the work placement experience plays a considerable part in developing student agency in the decisions and the journey that they make in their transition from school to work.

The significance of young, well‐educated workers in the Greek labour market has been largely neglected in studies addressing the issue of low participation rate in the labour force of the country. This study focuses on the reluctance of Greek students to enter the labour market and combine studies with paid work. This article reports on a survey that aimed to examine to what extent university students in Greece seek to work during term‐time and to explore student perceptions of combining studies and work.

The survey was conducted in May 2003 and involved 466 full‐time undergraduate students at the Universities of Macedonia and Aristotle in Thessaloniki, Greece. A structured questionnaire was used in exploring students’ perceptions of working and studying full‐time simultaneously.

The survey found that only 22 per cent of students have entered wage labour, while inactivity rate is very high, amounting to 55 per cent. Although many students assess employability after graduation as the main motivation for working, the majority of them are discouraged to search for a job because of schedule conflicts and lack of job opportunities.

In breaking this deadlock the article explores the idea of restructuring the internal labour market in Greek universities by expanding services and offering part‐time job positions to their students.

Given the dearth of empirical research on youth employment in Greece, this paper aims to contribute to debates in the wider academic community on the issue of preparing young, well‐educated people to enter the Greek labour market.

The use of collaborative group work is an important teaching and learning strategy for online and blended courses. However, the challenges of collaborative group work, such as the lack of online technology skills, time conflicts, differences in team member participation, and logistics of online and blended teamwork, often leave students dissatisfied by the process. To maximize the benefits and minimize the challenges, students should be supported in the development of skills with the use of relevant (often emerging or Web 2.0) online technologies and the development of skills related to online and blended collaborative group work. The Phases and Scaffolds for Technology Use and Collaborative Group Work course design process was developed to address this need and is shared in this chapter along with an action research-based case study designed from an action research approach. The purpose of this study was to find out what students thought about the aforementioned course design process, as well as to find out which online tools were most beneficial for online collaborative group work. Based on the results of the survey, the Phases and Scaffolds for Technology Use and Collaborative Group Work course design process had a positive impact on student satisfaction, student learning, and student success and the most beneficial and valued online collaborative group work tools included Skype, Google Docs, and Adobe Connect.

As students increasingly incur debt to finance their undergraduate education, there is heightened concern about the long-term implications of loans on borrowers, especially borrowers from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Drawing upon the concepts of cultural capital and habitus (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), this research explores how student debt and social class intersect and affect individuals’ trajectory into adulthood. Based on 50 interviews with young adults who incurred $30,000–180,000 in undergraduate debt and who were from varying social classes, the findings are presented in terms of a categorization schema (income level by level of cultural capital) and a conceptual model of borrowing. The results illustrate the inequitable payoff that college and debt can have for borrowers with varying levels of cultural resources, with borrowers from low-income, low cultural capital backgrounds more likely to struggle throughout and after college with their loans.

There is an essential link between the success of hospitality organizations and the availability of appropriate labor resources, making employee attraction a critical concern for the industry. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the role of work experience, both inside and outside the hospitality industry, in shaping students’ attitudes toward hospitality careers. The study was conducted on the group of 338 undergraduates and graduates enrolled in tourism and hospitality studies in Poznan, Poland. The findings suggest that work experience displays a stronger relationship with preferred than with perceived job and organization attributes. It is also related to perceptions of hospitality career attractiveness both in the long and in the short run as well as to intentions to apply for a job after graduation. The results underline the importance of providing students with quality work experience by the hospitality industry stakeholders as it can influence future career decisions.

Students in full-time higher education are increasingly combining work with study. This can present challenges and conflicting priorities which may result in stress and compromised academic performance. However, working can also afford students a better quality of life and enhanced employability. The growth of student employment creates implications for universities and employers. In this chapter, we report the results of our research which explored experiences of students at a business school in a large UK university who were working while studying. We examine the experiences and perceived consequences of combining employment with full-time study and seek to understand why students work during their degree program, the challenges and benefits of balancing work and factors which may help and hinder their efforts. The chapter builds on the existing knowledge base about the effects working has on students’ academic performance and well-being, and considers how universities, employers and social circumstances may support students in managing their complex lives.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to assist teachers in developing inquiry-based learning environments in secondary and post-secondary subject area classrooms that support their diverse students’ capacities for deep and intellectually engaged reading.

Design – Reading Apprenticeship professional learning has been developed to transform teachers’ understanding of their role in students’ literacy development and to build teachers’ capacity for re-enacting literacy instruction in the academic disciplines, engaging students in text-based inquiry, supporting their ongoing engagement, and gradually turning the work of learning over to students. The model reflects the understanding that for practice to become truly responsive to the needs and varied contexts of teachers’ work, teachers must become adaptive and generative in their use of specific practices. Reading Apprenticeship immerses teachers in experiential learning through patterns of practice that we expect them to recreate in their own classrooms. Teachers participate in inquiries designed to help them become reacquainted with their own disciplinary expertise in relation to literacy. Importantly, teachers collaboratively analyze students work through case studies of student literacy learning and videotaped classroom lessons designed to help teachers to reimagine what they and their own students can accomplish.

Findings – Reading Apprenticeship instructional tools and routines offer multiple opportunities for teachers to hear and respond to student thinking in relation to the text, thereby deepening the student reasoning processes and turning work over to students. The work of gradual release occurs in recursive cycles of reciprocal modeling that respond to students’ particular puzzlements and challenges with specific texts and engage students in shouldering more of the work of learning moment-to-moment, over time. Just as curricular ideas and topics build on one another over the course of a year of study, the challenges of text-based inquiry increase and build on previous accomplishments, constantly extending students’ reach. Engaging learners in taking up the work of text-based inquiry is a continuous cycle of support and graduated release and challenge calibrated to students’ needs and skill levels in the current learning moment.

Practical Implications – Current policies focused on accountability and efficiency in school reform conflict with evidence-based understandings of the learning process. The ongoing nature of learning and development through the gradual release of responsibility require that we not only tolerate, but unreservedly embrace and value learning progressions and their messiness for both students and their teachers. Embracing the ongoing learning journey calls for tolerance and generosity that we often withhold from teachers and students alike – to be in process, to be a learner, and to be en route to accomplishment. Learning entails risk and vulnerability. If we are truly invested in growth for both students and teachers, we must expect to invest continuously in and provide sustained support for their learning. The more opportunities to learn teachers are able to offer students, the more students can do. And the more students can do, the more teachers can give them.

This chapter proposes that enterprise education when applied to vocational education should be reconsidered according to a capability approach. This approach aims to improve students’ active participation and also their ability to make informed choices. Moreover, we believe that enterprise education needs an underpinning learning theory which can account for the collective nature of learning, innovation and movement across organisations. This new theoretical framework can be expansive learning. This chapter describes a case study carried out in 2014 in an Italian vocational course in hospitality. It documents the implementation of the theory of expansive learning for enterprise education within a series of workshops and evidences how a capabilities approach has been effectively utilised. During work experience, vocational students belong simultaneously to diverse activity systems such as school and work, which creates discontinuities in action and interaction. The basic principle of the workshops is that with the help of the researcher, vocational students, teachers and work tutors discuss the issues that students are having during work experience.

This chapter begins with a discussion on the role of enterprise education in vocational education, and continues by showing how the capability approach can contribute to education and entrepreneurship. The third section explains why and how the theory of expansive learning can underpin entrepreneurship education and how it was utilised in the model of workshops which incorporate enterprise education theory. Section four describes the case study in an Italian vocational secondary institute. The data presented includes excerpts of discussions during the fourth workshop, the student’s answer to the final questionnaire and the follow-up after two years. The conclusion draws out the learning mechanisms which characterised the workshops, what the students learnt in term of enterprise education and how the workshops are connected to a capability approach.