The growing prevalence of placements to bridge academic learning and real-life experience is taking a toll on students.
As they face growing financial pressures, many university students are prioritising part-time jobs over mandatory blocks of required practical coursework in industry and professional settings.
The result, of course, is delayed completion of their degrees.
Like many of us, students are grappling with escalating costs of living. In response, many have sought extra paid employment alongside their academic pursuits.
But having to complete lengthy unpaid, full-time placements in industry or professional settings to meet the requirements of a degree often means students are forced to put their paid work on hold.
Enter placement poverty, which occurs when mandatory practical placements or internships impose financial burdens on students, and push those with limited means towards poverty.
It prompts some students to temporarily withdraw from their courses – and industry placements – so they can focus on working full time to bankroll degree requirements at a point in the future. It also means they delay their course completion and graduation.
In other situations, students will abandon their studies altogether.
Those students completing placements in regional and remote areas are often required to carry the cost of travel and accommodation while continuing to pay the rent at or mortgage on their primary residence. Some of those same students will also have dependants to support while undertaking their practical work.
Placement poverty can potentially affect students across a range of disciplines but is most prevalent in fields where extensive, unpaid practical training is a requirement. Think of nursing, education, social work, and occupational therapy.
While university leaders have been quick to offer support through the provision of extra scholarships, offers of assistance to source affordable accommodation and, in some cases, emergency loans, those measures often do not go far enough.
Solving the problem of placement poverty is complex.
Some might point to cutting the number of hours required out in the field as the most obvious solution.
Yet universities and the business community increasingly advocate the importance of placements in bridging academic learning and real-life experience.
Placements enable students to gain practical experience, skills development, networking opportunities, employability, and a chance to explore a particular career path.
The rise of placement poverty at a time when qualified professionals in some areas are in short supply has prompted the introduction of initiatives designed to alleviate its impact.
Western Australia’s Department of Education, for example, offers pre-service teachers undertaking their professional experience up to $250 per week when completing a placement at one of its schools or education support centres.
The WA Country Health Service and the Mental Health Commission offer grants for eligible allied health students undertaking placements in regional WA.
Those grants are available to students in a wide range of health-based degrees, including physiotherapy, dietetics, audiology and speech pathology, and provide support with the cost of travelling to a placement site.
While these are welcome initiatives for those experiencing placement poverty, the opportunity to provide a better fix lies in changes to the Commonwealth’s Fair Work Act.
The Fair Work Act (2009) allows student placements that meet the Act’s definition to be legally unpaid.
“Students completing vocational placements are not considered to be employees and therefore are not entitled to the minimum wage nor other entitlements provided under the Fair Work Act,” the Fair Work Australia website says.
Amending the Act to pay students undertaking placements the minimum wage might help relieve financial hardship but could create other problems.
Many organisations, especially not-for-profit, community and charitable groups, will struggle with the extra cost of paying students placed with them. It might, in turn, exacerbate the existing challenge many universities experience in finding relevant and valuable placements for their students.
And businesses not in a position to pay could argue universities should.
While some Australian universities might be in a financial position to do so, many are not.
What this might suggest is the need for the Commonwealth to fund the remuneration of students completing placements. Doing so would be an investment in the ongoing supply of professionals, many of whom will end up working in local, state and federal government agencies.
• Professor Gary Martin is chief executive officer of the Australian Institute of Management WA
