The summer vacation: influences on the hours students work

Abstract

The authors look at what determines the number of hours United Kingdom undergraduate students work in summer vacation employment. This is of interest because such employment is now, because of the nature of the United Kingdom Higher Education system, providing an important means of financing for students. They find the differing personal characteristics of students do not, either on their own or collectively, exert a significant influence on the total number of hours individual students were employed during their summer vacation. This finding would suggest that students were treated, in the labour market, as a homogeneous group although the students themselves exercised a degree of self-selection regarding the decision as to whether to seek full or part-time employment. A possible explanation for these findings is the similarity of the work being sought by students during the summer vacation. The authors find no evidence of a backward bending labour supply curve for students which may be due to the limited time period students were to spend in the labour market and the temptation of extra income to offset the need for loans.