Universities must take the initiative over student jobs

Universities are getting involved in organising students' term-time employment. This is not new in respect of sandwich courses, but is now extending to casual work (pages 6 and 7). This is a grey area. The distinction between full- and part-time students is blurring. Many full-time students moonlight for 20 hours and more a week during the term. But grant and loan regulations mean much still turns on the distinction, with part-timers still excluded.

With debts mounting, tuition fees coming in this year and the minimum wage (albeit at a low level for young students) next year, it is a good moment for universities to review their arrangements. Working your way through school has long been a characteristic of American higher education. More importantly, campus jobs have, through a federal scheme, been systematically used as part of packages of support for poorer students.

Term-time work is less robustly tackled here for historical reasons. Not only the grant and loan rules, but also university statutes, make recognition of what is going on awkward. Opposition from campus unions also makes the issue sensitive. It is comparatively easy to offer a clearing house for off-campus work, as many universities are now doing. It is harder to negotiate with campus trade and student unions a system of providing on-campus jobs. But this is what is going to be needed if such jobs are to be available as part of the support arrangements for poorer students. Without such targeted help, students from the least well-off families are going to face the heaviest debts or find themselves working long hours in conditions over which the university has no control, thereby damaging their academic prospects.