A widespread public view of university students is that they tend to lead a sheltered life. Even if students take a year or more out between school and tertiary studies, many gain little experience of the kind of working environments that will provide them with a living for the next 40 years.
This accepted wisdom may, however, soon alter as a result of a surge in interest for work experience for students by universities throughout Britain. Since, in 1997, Sir Ron Dearing and his National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education reported that work experience was a way to improve standards, university departments have been falling over themselves to get their students into the workplace.
But where is the evidence that farming students out on work placements actually raises their attainment levels or improves their employment prospects when they leave university?
Professor Lee Harvey and his colleagues at the Centre for Research into Quality at the University of Central England in Birmingham have been interested in finding answers to these and other questions concerning work experience. With colleagues from Lancaster University, Harvey has found that although work experience regularly relates to students having a more positive view of their learning, there do appear to be distinct subject variations concerning its impact.
Students of art and design were found to be most enthusiastic about work experience. Of those questioned who had been on work experience, 69% found that their placements had been very useful and important. The longer the placement, the more satisfied the students. Those who had been on placements in excess of 45 weeks were more than three times as likely to have been satisfied with the experience as those who had been in the workplace for less than six weeks.
Taken as a whole, those who had work experience were more likely to be satisfied with their undergraduate degree programmes. Surprisingly, given the vocational nature of art and design, only 29% of the 2 000 respondents to the questionnaire had been on a work placement. The lack of available placements was seen as a significant problem.
The need to feel they are doing something worthwhile on work placements is a recurring theme among students. Emily Chissell is a Leeds University final-year politics and parliamentary studies student who spent her third year as an assistant with elected politicians in Canada and the United Kingdom. With Svend Robinson, a Vancouver representative in Canada’s Parliament, and Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat MP for Winchester, Chissell went to see how the parliaments worked. However, she got more than she bargained for when, in both placements, she was caught up in national elections.
She recalls: ”Before we went out on placement we were given a course on how to get the best out of work experience with MPs. But little did they realise that I was going to play a significant part in conducting two election campaigns. I was working from 9am till 9pm because neither politician had a large back-up staff, but I loved every minute of it. It might have been stressful but I learned so much that was relevant to my degree. Both politicians greatly appreciated my help and, although I never got started on my research project in Canada, I was given a great deal of responsibility in both placements.”
It is because he has been given a high level of responsibility that Jonathan Shore is so happy with his current work for Nigel Evans, the Conservative MP for Ribble Valley. Shore is a politics student at Salford University and is on a six-month placement as a parliamentary assistant in Westminster. ”I work 9am till 6pm most days. The work is intense and I am mainly involved with answering constituents’ letters, answering telephone queries and doing research projects for Nigel. Although he approves everything before it goes out, Nigel has placed a great deal of the onus on me to use my own initiative.”
Not all students are as happy as Shore with their work placements. Since the students are employed to do a job of work they are subject to the same pressures as any other employee, and many complain that the needs of the employer often override the needs of the student.
In a report for the Council for Industry and Higher Education, Brenda Little wrote: ”Lack of guidance from the company’s ‘centre’ to front-line managers on aspects of the placement scheme could lead to varying interpretations on such things as appropriate duties and adequate ‘time out’ to allow the student to reflect critically …” More time was often needed to allow the student to ”assess the success or failure of certain actions, determine new objectives and make progress with university- specific requirements”.
Engineering students seem to be less keen on work experience than those in other subjects. As Harvey and his colleagues report: ”Given official enthusiasm for the extension of work experience, there is cause for unease at the reported impact of work experience upon engineering undergraduates.”
This might be due to the fact that engineering students arrive at their placements with an inflated opinion of their own skill levels. ”Employers should anticipate that most engineering students will claim to have a good grasp of work-related skills, but it would be wise to test those claims energetically,” the researchers advise.
Despite the vocational nature of engineering, it is disturbing to find that student demand for work experience placements appears to outstrip supply. Over half of those who had not been out into industry had tried to do so but not succeeded.
The demand for work placements among undergraduates is understandable since there is a demonstrable correlation to higher graduate employment rates. Based on analysis of first-destination employment returns provided by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, it was shown that graduates from sandwich courses have higher postgraduation employment rates. Six months after graduation, almost 70% of sandwich graduates were in full-time employment compared with 55% of students on equivalent non-sandwich courses.
However, this early employment rate advantage is not uniform throughout subject areas. In architecture, for example, full-time students (52%) had much higher employment rates than students who went on ”thick-sandwich” placements (37,6%). Among modern language students the gap is greater and 55% of full-time students found employment compared with 33% of thick-sandwich students.
As Harvey and his colleagues have indicated, ”neither experience of work nor any form of work experience appeared to be intrinsically beneficial”. The students who had been contacted repeatedly emphasised that successful work experience depended on academic staff accepting that learning also takes place outside the normal academic environment. As a consequence, the researchers argue that ”it can be strongly suggested that for work experience to be taken seriously it needs to be accredited, either towards the programme award or as a separate award of the institution or of an external body”.
Studies conducted so far suggest that the extent to which higher education institutions help their students get the best out of work experience is patchy. Unless there is a concerted effort by academic staff and employers to make placements purposeful and supported by rigorous quality monitoring, there is a danger that work experience will merely be an exercise in ”image management”. —