Learning to walk the wire: preparing students for precarious life

Abstract

University students today are preparing for a more precarious future than previous generations, and the global pandemic has exacerbated their sense of insecurity and vulnerability. Drawing on data from a longitudinal study of undergraduate students at a large Canadian university, this paper examines the narratives of working students, before and since the pandemic lockdowns began in early 2020. Narratives focus on students’ attempts to handle the diverse rhythms of multiple activities, and how they respond to precariousness in work, family, and academic studies. Findings illustrate intractable tensions within higher education between logics of competition and care, and between access and selectivity. Further, universities, as well as employers, can be seen to contribute to the precarity of students, and to a ‘crisis of care’ in society more generally. Our analysis suggests the need for a more expansive and generous vision for higher education, which recognizes and supports students in their diversity.

Keywords:

• university students
• precariousness
• pandemic
• rhythms
• care

Introduction

Post-secondary education continues to be seen as an avenue for social mobility. Yet there is growing uncertainty about whether student investments in higher education will be rewarded by higher earnings and better working conditions (Brown, Lauder, and Cheung 2020). If, in Fordist economies, students were seen as ‘learning to labour’ (Willis 1977), then in the current context (variously called a ‘knowledge-economy’ or ‘gig-economy’) university students, like many others, appear to be learning to live with insecurity and vulnerability. Governments and higher education systems contribute to student insecurity to varying degrees, through their admission and tuition policies, institutional stratification, and levels of public support and entitlements (Liu, Green, and Pensiero 2016).

Since early 2020, the global COVID-19 public health crisis has also increased stress and insecurity for most working university students. A survey conducted with 1000 post-secondary education students across Canada in May 2020 found that students were worried about physical and mental health, finances, the move to online learning, and the long-term implications of the pandemic for their futures (Canadian Alliance of Student Associations 2020). For financially insecure students, however, precarity was familiar long before the pandemic.

Drawing on data from a longitudinal study of undergraduate students at a large Canadian university, this paper examines the narratives of working students, before and since the pandemic lockdowns began in early 2020. Comparing the pre-pandemic narratives of financially insecure students with the mid-pandemic narratives of more financially secure students reveals the degree to which a sense of embodied precariousness has become generalized. Overall, student narratives suggest that university systems contribute to student precarity and to a societal ‘crisis of care’ more generally (Fraser 2016), a finding that should spur changes in higher education.

Precarity in work, precarious life

The term precarity or precariousness has been variously used to reference ‘a labor condition, a class identity, an ontological experience of human existence, [and] a generalized state of the world today’ (Millar 2017, e12483). The present paper adopts the latter definition of precariousness as an affective state that pervades society, including higher education. Precariousness is therefore evident in the activities that reproduce life, in learning, and in employment.

British writer Guy Standing (2011a) describes the rise of the ‘precariat’ as a class consisting of millions of people globally who have insecure jobs, insecure housing, and insecure social entitlements. In his analysis, the precariat includes individuals who are disadvantaged by their citizenship status and class background as well as those ‘emerging from the schooling system over-credentialised for a flexi-job life on offer’ (2011a, 4). Such precarity has consequences for human flourishing; increased pressure to labour and to develop labour market survival skills contributes to mental and physical exhaustion (Standing 2011b, 128). The term ‘slow death’ has been used to describe the ‘structurally induced’, ‘physical wearing out’ of certain populations – for example, the racialized working class in the USA (Berlant 2011, 73 and 102).

While precarity in employment has long been the norm for workers in the Global South (Millar 2017), an increasing number of workers in the North now lack coverage under minimum employment standards or are unable to exercise their workplace rights because of their insecure employment status. Canadian research suggests that groups already disadvantaged in the labour market – for instance, due to citizenship status, racialized identities, gender, and/or disability – are more likely to end up in precarious employment (Ross and Thomas 2019).

Precariousness extends beyond labour markets to describe a generalized state of the world. Judith Butler, for example, uses the term ‘precariousness’ to describe a common human vulnerability, albeit a vulnerability that is distributed unequally in society (Millar 2017). Lauren Berlant adds that ‘precarity provides the dominant structure and experience of the present moment, cutting across class and localities’, affecting ‘everyone whose bodies and lives are saturated by capitalist forces and rhythms’ (2011, 192; emphases in original). This general approach is adopted here because it acknowledges the interdependence of production and reproduction regimes, work and family, economy, and society (Fraser 2016).

For students and others, the embodied experience of precarity involves negotiating the different tempos of multiple (paid and unpaid) work activities (Tsianos and Papadopoulos 2006). The production of differentially positioned bodies as labour power under capitalism involves the ‘subordinations of bodily rhythms’, and acculturation to ‘strict spaciotemporal rhythms’ (Harvey 1998, 406). Rational rhythms superimpose themselves on the multiple natural rhythms of the body, and in the process, change them (Lefebvre 2004). In the ‘gigified’ capitalist economy, the usual divisions between day and night, labour and leisure, and private and public have been effaced (Palmer 2021). The narratives of working students evince this blurring of presumed temporal distinctions and, moreover, express the embodied precarity that such time-warps entail.

The context: system inequalities and student precariousness

The rise of mass higher education systems is typically viewed as a positive development (James 2017). However, the extent to which massification leads to more equitable student participation varies across nations. Higher education systems in Nordic countries are characterized by more equality of opportunity, while ‘liberal English-speaking countries’ tend to have higher levels of inequality (Liu, Green, and Pensiero 2016, 249). Persistent inequality is usually related to higher levels of private provision and institutional stratification, and low levels of public funding and other supports (Marginson 2016). In his examination of the political economy of student finance regimes, Garritzmann (2016) characterizes Nordic Europe as low-tuition–high-subsidy regimes, and Anglo-Saxon countries as high-tuition–high-subsidy regimes. In the latter, students are charged significant tuition fees, and inequities are partially addressed through public grants or publicly subsidized student loans.

Anglo-Saxon countries also vary. Marginson suggests that stratification and tuition levels in Canadian higher education are ‘more modest than in the U.S’ (2016, 430). In an earlier comparison, Davies and Hammack (2005) propose that forms (as well as levels) of higher education stratification vary; while undergraduate students in the USA were competing primarily for access to elite colleges, Canadian students tended to compete for elite majors. However, other forms of inequality in Canadian post-secondary education have risen as tuition revenue (especially that of international students) is used to address the increasing gap between institutional operating expenditures and provincial grants (Usher 2019). Almost two-thirds of financial support to students was delivered via loans in 2016/17, and average undergraduate student debt since 2006 has been around Cdn $27,000 (Usher 2019).

Students’ term-time work is also linked to inequalities in higher education (Weiss and Roksa 2016). The proportion of full-time university students in Canada who work increased from 30% in 1979 to 45% in the mid-2000s (Neill 2015). National US data suggest that full-time students from ‘low education’ families attending four-year institutions worked more hours than others (Weiss and Roksa 2016). Despite tuition waivers in Scottish universities, Findlay and Hermannsson (2019) found that working-class students were equally likely to work, earned similar rates of pay, worked over two hours more per week, and experienced greater financial stress than their middle-class colleagues. Meeuwisse et al. (2017) report that ‘non-Western ethnic minority students’ at a Dutch university also worked more hours per week than others. Qualitative studies offer more nuanced analysis of the ways in which social class, gender, and ethnicity permeate undergraduate students’ experiences before and after graduation (Bathmaker 2021). In addition to being more likely to work, low-income university students at an English university were less able to shape employment opportunities to the needs of their future career ambitions (Hordósy, Clark, and Vickers 2018). Authors agree that targeted assistance and interventions for low-income students, and more flexibility for working students, are needed to reduce inequities in higher education.

In what follows, I examine how different working students narrate their attempts to handle the diverse rhythms of multiple activities, and how they respond to precariousness in work, family, and academic studies. This analysis demonstrates the ways in which precariousness is embodied. Examining experiences of precariousness before and since the pandemic shines a light on pre-existing tensions within the system of higher education, for example, between logics of competition and care, and between access and selectivity. Moving beyond discourses of resilience and self-investment, this analysis suggests the need for a more expansive and generous vision for higher education, which recognizes and supports students in their diversity.

The hard-working student study

This paper examines the narratives of working students, before and since the pandemic lockdowns began in early 2020. Initial recruitment for this longitudinal study focused on second-year undergraduates who worked while studying full-time at a large Canadian research-intensive university. Most data collection activities occurred prior to the beginning of the pandemic; activities included focus group interviews, life maps, and audio diaries with 57 students in 2018 and 2019. After the onset of the pandemic, study participants were invited to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on their studies and work, and 15 participated in five focus groups in November 2020. Longitudinal research provides the opportunity to see changes as well as consistencies in student narratives over time.

The following section presents themes from the ‘pandemic’ focus group interviews, contextualized using previous data collected with the same participants. Of the 15 participants, 11 are female, four are international students, and seven are racialized students (four from immigrant families). Their programmes include business, arts, science, and engineering. Most did not self-identify as financially precarious.

Discussion then turns to the narratives of five financially precarious students based primarily on data collected before the pandemic, with ‘pandemic updates’. Two of these students are from racialized immigrant families, one is male, and all are domestic students. All five are in science or health-related programmes. Three students were at least a few years older than the average (20 years) at the time of our first interview. Four students are ‘first generation’ (neither parent had completed a university degree), one was married, and three had applied for accommodation for a disability. None lived with parents at the time of our first interview, although one moved between residence and her parents’ home during our data collection.

Thematic analysis of transcripts considered student reflections on their work history, intersections between studies and work, and future aspirations. It also focused on forms of insecurity and vulnerability as well as strategies and tactics described by students before and during the pandemic. Using NVivo, data were analysed in an iterative way by looking at all data sources for individual students first and then coding across the students. In this paper, providing rich contextual information is balanced with the need to protect participant anonymity. Pseudonyms are used for all participants.

Pandemic and pre-pandemic precariousness

I would say that the biggest impact of the pandemic has been on my mental health. COVID-19 has caused many uncertainties in this already important and chaotic time in my life. This has caused me to stress greatly and become very anxious about the future. (Penny, living with parents during COVID-19, November 2020)

[My fear in university] mostly revolved around finances, that’s the overgrowing theme of it, that’s the giant monster, ‘where, how do I live?’ (Michael, no financial support from parents, March 2019)

The pandemic has shaken social institutions worldwide as pre-existing cracks in systems have become more obvious. These cracks are arguably related to what Nancy Fraser (2016, 99) has called a ‘crisis of care’, linked to notions of ‘time poverty’, ‘family–work balance’, and ‘social depletion’, and resulting from pressures that ‘squeeze social capacities’ for caring, connection, and community. Over time, ‘carelessness’ in higher education has been exacerbated by the neoliberal valorization of competitive individualism and entrepreneurialism (Lynch 2010). Although the capitalist economy relies on ‘activities of provisioning, care-giving and interaction that produce and maintain social bonds’, care work in higher education is usually a site of struggle, partly because it is time consuming, invisible, and inequitably distributed (Fraser 2016, 101; Lynch 2010; Hughes et al. 2007). However, with the onset of the pandemic, there has been more attention to the need for care.

After the first pandemic lockdown, students struggled with sudden changes over which they had little control. Internships and exchanges were cancelled; many students moved back with parents; learning moved online; the boundaries between academics and other activities became blurrier; and students struggled with balancing school, work, leisure, and self-care. In short, the pandemic created a generalized sense of precariousness. Some students who, prior to the pandemic, had presented themselves as poised for a ‘magnificent swim out to the horizon’ were now ‘desperately dog paddling’ (Berlant 2011, 117). However, even before COVID-19, financially insecure students, particularly those with additional care responsibilities, often experienced disruption, unpredictability, vulnerability, and risk. The following sections present narratives from these two groups of students before and since the pandemic’s onset.

Pandemic precariousness

In focus group interviews conducted eight months after the first pandemic lockdown, students spoke about changes in rhythms. (Following Lefebvre [2004], I understand rhythms as the interactions between time, space, and energy.) The boundaries around academic work, paid work, and leisure activities were dissolving, and corresponding spaces were shrinking. Students described the impact of the pandemic in terms of increased mobility and disruptions in plans, depleted energy and exhaustion, frustration over the university’s lack of care, and heightened uncertainty about the future.

With the move to remote learning, several students moved back in with parents. For international students, decisions about moving back home or staying were more complicated because of border restrictions, effects on future plans, and time zone challenges. Most felt it made little sense to pay exorbitant international student tuition fees for online classes. For domestic students, moving back home was likely to alleviate financial pressure but interrupted their growing sense of responsibility and independence. Some financially secure students therefore chose not to move back home.

Most students described COVID times in terms similar to Berlant’s account of impasse – ‘the space where the urgencies of livelihood are worked out all over again, without assurances of futurity’ (2011, 200). Financially secure students expressed disappointment with the disruption to plans for summer study abroad, international exchange, and holidays. Students voiced concern about the impact of learning online on grades, their learning experiences, and their investments in education more generally. In particular, students worried that these ‘investments’ were being devalued.

With less structure, students struggled with the pressure to be productive. Most students lamented the lack of physical and mental separation between academic and other activities. Violet says ‘there’s never an end time’, and Regina states ‘if I’m not doing school, I’m thinking about the fact that I should be doing school’. As Celeste, who moved back in with her parents, comments, ‘there’s no real closure to the class in my bedroom’.

Similarly, Heather says:

So, my desk is in my bedroom, so I sleep in here, and I do work in here, and I do tests, I go to school in here, and I chat with my friends in here. So, there’s no more boundary, I would say between when I need to stop working, and when I’m going to school, and when I’m meeting up with my friends.

Prior to the pandemic, Heather lived away from home and expressed pride in her growing self-sufficiency.

Students who were working part-time or in full-time cooperative education jobs found that employers were not respecting work boundaries. For example, Edward, who was working as a teaching assistant noted ‘we receive emails from profs and everyone in the department on weekends and evenings so it just – there’s no time when you’re really off’. Ranbir, who was working in a cooperative education job added:

a lot of my friends are in co-op as well and . . . their bosses are just expecting way too much out of them. And like, even supervisors are expecting people to, you know, do stuff at 8 pm, which is, by no standard regular, right?

As Palmer notes, hard-won labour gains seem to have been ‘thrown out the pandemic shattered window’ (2021, 15). The embodied precarity of students was evidenced by need to ‘accommodate constant availability’ in employment, coupled with the need to adapt to the new rhythms of academic and other activities occurring in rearranged spaces and timelines (see Tsianos and Papadopoulos 2006, 2).

Financially secure students, who previously expressed little difficulty balancing school and work suddenly found it difficult to cope with the academic workload. The extra organizational work and intensification of learning created by the pandemic adversely affected students’ focus and motivation while increasing their fatigue. As Heather comments: ‘I’m doing five courses and it’s the equivalent, I would say, of six or seven’.

Regina adds:

Like on the busier days I’m spending ten plus hours doing schoolwork. . . . It takes twice as long now . . . Because there’s no – [professors] can’t gauge where the class is at because they’re talking to a screen, and they often record the lecture so that it’s asynchronous and convenient but then like they pack it so full of information, you have to keep pausing to say like . . . what’s that? You know? Like I need to write this down. And how do you spell this?

As the pandemic lockdowns began, Regina was completing seven months of international exchange in two different countries.

The result of student struggles to adjust to the new rhythms was exhaustion or a cycle of underwork–overwork. For example, Jenny, who had an extremely busy schedule of work, studies, and extra-curricular activities prior to the pandemic, comments:

Like attending [synchronous] lectures is the most physically draining thing for me, and if I go from lecture to paid work to lecture to paid work back to lecture again in one day, there’s no way I can do anything else after that.

Heather found that the pandemic move home affected her work habits:

[I]n the beginning I was super unproductive with my time, because for me being at home is the place where I can relax and it’s not a place where I do any sort of work. . . . I was doing my assignment and watching Netflix. . . . And now it’s kind of swung the other way. . . . So now when I sit at my desk I just think ‘It’s time to work’. And I just work until all hours of the day. I work through my lunch break. I work through my dinner. It’s gotten a little unhealthy. . . . And I know that I’ll maybe burn out soon.

Heather’s reflections contrast with her confidence in an earlier interview (November 2019) after completing a full-time internship in her field as well as an international exchange.

Students felt that most professors were empathetic. However, responses were inconsistent. For example, according to Edward, some professors seem to think:

[W]ell if you don’t have to commute for three hours a day . . . you’ll have that time to spend on readings. So, I found that it’s half and half, where half of my classes give more readings than usual and the other half is complete opposite.

Instructors had been required to quickly respond to changes in their own working conditions, including intensification and an increase in pastoral responsibility for students, with often negative effects on their health and well-being (Watermeyer et al. 2021).

Students experienced the pandemic impasse as a ‘delay that demands activity’ (Berlant 2011, 199). Many were disappointed by their lack of energy – ‘because you have so much more time, you [think you] should be so much better at managing everything’ (Samantha). However, their motivation and ability to focus were adversely affected. Students missed sociality and the small pauses between activities:

profs think that because we don’t have to walk in between classes anymore they can just go until the very end of the lecture [or over time], but like I have to eat and use the bathroom too, I’m still a human being. (Jenny)

Students thus struggled to adjust to new academic rhythms that were imposed on bodily rhythms (Lefebvre 2004).

Like professors, academic departments were described as inconsistent in their responses to the pandemic. When asked how universities could better support students, Penny spoke about the contradiction between care and departmental standards:

I know myself and a lot of other students have felt this way. When your university or the department send out messages and they’re like ‘you know, we hope you’re doing well during this time’, but then they counteract [it] and they’re like, ‘Oh, but here’s ten assignments you have to do’ . . . Y’know, maybe if just professors thought like ‘what would I be feeling if I was a student, trying to get my degree in this position’. Just really accommodating that. I know, obviously [university] is like ‘We’re a world-class university we don’t want to change our standards too much’. But, you know, we have a pandemic.

Overall, students responded to uneven institutional care by trying to assert more control over the rhythms of academic and paid work. Financially secure students were usually able to reduce their course load and/or paid work hours. Short-term government pandemic supports (the Canada Emergency Response Benefit and the Canada Emergency Student Benefit) meant that most students had some financial support during the summer of 2020. However, like other Canadian students (CASA 2020), several participants expressed uncertainty about the future impact of economic crisis. Whereas the same students felt optimistic prior to the pandemic, their mood had changed noticeably by late 2020.

Some students responded to increased uncertainty by intensifying their efforts to distinguish themselves. For example, Edward, who was working 25 hours per week while taking six courses, comments:

[A] lot of people, like me, have been overachieving, or felt like they have to overachieve [during COVID] because our education counts less because it’s online. . . . So, I’m thinking a lot more about the future than I am the present, I’m thinking about six months to a year ahead, oftentimes.

Prior to the pandemic, Edward was carefully planning an international research exchange and a graduate school application.

Jenny, whose parents are highly educated professionals too, also worked hard to maintain her competitive edge:

So, I was really worried at the beginning of the year that I wouldn’t be able to find a job that I felt was worthy of all the work I had done in my undergrad. . . . So, I really stressed out and started trying to find things that would pad my resume. So, all these different volunteer positions . . . to really try to set me apart from everybody else who had just kind of gone to school and that was it. But when you do that, there’s still a risk that you might not find anything. I’m trying not to think about it too hard.

Prior to the pandemic, Jenny worked at an academic-oriented job on campus, was applying for an international exchange, and gave the impression of being highly goal-oriented.

Focus group data suggest that, for some students, the pandemic intensified the pressure to achieve. More generally, they seem to accept a ‘culture of overwork’ associated with the idea of a meritocracy based on talent and hard work (Collini 2021, 8). However, the impasse presented by COVID also prompted a rethinking of priorities beyond paid work as students reflected on what is important to them. When asked what they would ‘take away’ from the pandemic experience, financially secure students referred to the importance of community ties, including religious affiliations (Edward); making more time for hobbies and leisure (Jenny); being spontaneous, having fun, and slowing down (Elsa); setting intentional boundaries around work (Ranbir) and keeping it separate from home life (Regina); appreciating connections with others (Samantha); and valuing health and family (Penny). These responses suggest the possibility of valorizing forms of self-investment that are more consistent with human flourishing (see Feher 2009). Centring care for self and others and making it more than lip service, however, will require collective action (Precarias a la Deriva 2006). The role of the university in this becomes clearer when we consider the experiences of financially insecure students prior to COVID-19.

Pre-pandemic precariousness

Longitudinal data from five financially insecure participants highlight how academic institutions, as well as employers, create situations of precariousness for students. Working students who are financially insecure must adapt to the different tempos and mobilities required at school and work, with little protection in either sphere (see Tsianos and Papadopoulos 2006). Student workers often accept low wages, lack of benefits, inadequate training, discrimination, just-in-time scheduling, and limited opportunities for promotion because they see this work as a temporary stage in their journey towards professional work and middle-class lifestyles (Tannock and Flocks 2003, 17). While many universities provide ‘career relevant’ work opportunities on campus, student demand usually exceeds supply and the cap on hours discourages financially insecure students. Further, students who have worked since high school often continue to work in jobs in retail, food, and beverage services because the rhythms are familiar and they may have advanced to supervisory roles. The neoliberalized university places significant pressure on students to be self-regulating and self-responsible (Watermeyer et al. 2021). However, when working students are also dealing with family health issues and disability, their situations can be overwhelming. This section addresses students’ intersecting experiences of precarity at home, school, and work.

While COVID-19 has led to increased mobility and disruption for all students, financially insecure students are used to being unsettled. Aleah immigrated to Canada with her family at age 14 years and had to mature very quickly during their settlement. Once in Canada, her family moved to wherever her father could find work. Aleah began her university studies in 2013 close to where her parents lived, but her studies were disrupted by her family responsibilities. She recalls taking time off early in her university career when her father was laid off so she that could help pay the mortgage:

[That’s] why I had to take some semesters off because I had to work extra, and I was taking maybe three courses so I could also [work] on the side. That’s why my bachelors is taking forever. (FI,¹ May 2020)

Aleah moved to begin studies at her current university in another province five years later, but retained close ties to her family.

Michael is also a first-generation university student from an immigrant family, who had supported himself financially since high school. He began his post-secondary studies at a college, then transferred to the smaller campus of his current university (almost 400 kilometres away from home). Later, he moved to the larger campus for a health-related programme. His academic career has also been punctuated by breaks in his studies to make money and pursue work opportunities. Upon entering university, Michael struggled with the double shift of work and studies:

There was a lot of times where I was scared . . . there was times where I even broke down and cried . . . If I had to relive it again, I don’t think I want to do that. It terrifies me. (March 2019)

Michael described himself as living ‘paycheck to paycheck’ at this time.

Like Aleah and Michael, Katrina is at least a few years older than students who move directly from high school to university and is also a first-generation university student. She too enrolled in a small transfer college, to allow her to ease into post-secondary education and gain confidence. However, the transfer extended her programme since some credits did not articulate as promised. Katrina’s previous career-related work experience (prior learning) did not seem to count in her application to a health-related professional programme. In addition to the impact of financial insecurity, Katrina faced a challenging transition because she required accommodations for a learning disability and family illnesses.

For Helena and Lucy, disruptions in academic studies and challenging transitions from high school to university were related primarily to gaining accommodations for disabilities. Helena moved from a high school where she received excellent support for her physical disability, to university where it has been a struggle to find the help she needs. Having to move away from home to attend university resulted in additional challenges, including housing insecurity. Lucy’s family lives closer to the university, which provided much needed support; however, she had spent much of her time since high school trying to diagnose and treat a serious and recurring physical problem.

Collectively, these five students share an experience of non-linear, extended transitions to university characterized by disruptions related to care responsibilities and lack of resources. As other researchers have found (Meuleman et al. 2015), financial insecurity and being the first in their family to attend university also factor into their precariousness. While the pandemic lockdown led to shifts in the rhythms of academic and paid work activities for all students, financially insecure students were already familiar with experiences of ‘arrhythmia’ – discordant rhythms of school, work, and bodies (Lefebvre 2004).

Four of five students worked above the average of 14 hours per week reported in a Canadian study (CUSC 2019). At the time of our first interview, Aleah worked 15 hours per week in tutoring jobs. During high school she avoided minimum wage jobs by creating entrepreneurial opportunities for herself and her family. Michael worked 25–30 hours per week at a regional job related to operations for a large company. Katrina was working an average of 16 hours per week in a job in a customer service job, although she would have preferred to work more. Helena worked 16 hours per week in a stressful retail job before moving to a tutoring job that suited her better. Lucy had to limit her work to around 14 hours per week in a supervisory role in a café because of her disability and would have preferred to work more.

These students worked to pay for necessities, to reduce debt, to increase their academic efficiency, to invest in the future, and because they could not imagine not working. For example, Katrina commented that working was necessary for her well-being because ‘I have to pay the bills, so if I am not working then I am constantly thinking about how am I going to pay the bills’ (AD, March 2019). Helena was debt shy because she was planning to pursue graduate studies. Aleah felt that working hard to pay for her studies made her value her educational investment more:

I worked as like an [online retailer] delivery person who had to deliver 100 packages per day. . . . So, I was like ‘I am really going to attend every single lecture because I am going to pay for my lectures with this money that I’m earning’. (FG, January 2019)

Participants knew, however, that financial insecurity was not a valid reason for accommodation in the eyes of universities. As Lucy comments:

[S]ometimes it feels like . . . grabbing that extra shift, is worth taking away four hours of studying because it’s like, ‘hey, I did have to pay for this textbook or something, right?’ Like there’s definitely times where I’ve had to choose work over school and the professor’s not really being able to know that, and seeing it as ‘oh, as they chose work over school’. Well, sometimes, it’s not really a choice. (FG, January 2019)

The pace of academic life while working also contributed to student stress. For example, a mathematics course made Katrina feel like she’s on a ‘max speed roller-coaster, trying to catch my breath all the time’ (LM, February 2019). ‘Catching her breath’ was challenging because of work and other commitments, and because her gap years meant that she already felt behind in such courses. Katrina’s academic schedule made it difficult for her to participate in staff meetings and online training at work, while her work schedule made it impossible for her to attend lectures or to have energy for studying. Like the other four students, her academic life was completely separate from her work life and she had little time for a social life.

Helena also described her work–school balance as ‘very wobbly’. At our first meeting, she was working in a retail job where her schedule was unpredictable. The rhythms of school and work were ‘not in sync at all’ – for example, ‘exam season’ at school was ‘sale time’ at the store. Like Katrina, Helena described herself as ‘always rushed’, always ‘playing catch up’. Moving to a job with a more predictable schedule helped. Still, the time pressure remained:

I worked 21, 22 hours this week. So, I just don’t have time to do minimum 80 hours – so 60 hours of schoolwork, 20 hours of work-work and I also have to attend all of my classes and also sleep and also eat and also feed myself. . . . my sleep is bad, my mental health is bad, my eating habits are absolutely atrocious, my hygiene is degrading, my social battery – gone . . . a lot of my personal mental strength and prowess is gone. (AD, December 2019)

Rather than a state of eurhythmia (harmony among diverse rhythms), Helena’s condition is better described as arrhythmia (when rhythms break apart) (Lefebvre 2004). Such students find themselves in a double bind – although their work meets their short-term financial needs, it restricts their time to interact with professors, for homework and studying, and for developing a support network on campus. The separation between term-time work and studies also made it difficult for them to clarify post-graduation plans (see Hordósy, Clark, and Vickers 2018).

Other financially precarious students were familiar with this double bind. Michael opines that working while studying allows ‘you to push yourself to the limits’, but also recalls ‘times where I was irrational, irritable and just lost myself’ because of the strain. Lucy was confronted with her physical limitations in her first year of university – ‘for a while there, I burned myself out’ (FG, January 2019). Aleah describes her difficulty concentrating on her studies when academics, work, her three-hour round-trip commute to the university, and caring work depleted her. Although work was seen as a given in these students’ lives, Michael adds ‘If I had money, I would try to live a more strategic life’ (LM, March 2019). If it was easier to attend university without financial worries, these students might make different decisions about work.

The five students discussed here were passionate about learning, have a vision of the good life (Berlant 2011), and believe that a university education is the best way to achieve it. They aspired to satisfying professional careers, having families, and contributing to their communities. While COVID-19 has increased uncertainty for all students and has sparked a rethinking of priorities and values for some (as noted in the previous section), students who have faced various forms of inaccessibility and whose educational careers have been characterized by disruption and mobility recognize more quickly that their ‘investments’ in education may not pay off. Their responses, even before the pandemic began, included being persistent, having back up plans, being open to change, and thinking expansively about skills.

Michael’s route into his current programme was far from smooth and his career goal was uncertain. Despite taking courses to ‘boost my GPA to really make myself shine through the applications’, he had been unable to gain access to his programme of choice. Still, he expressed hope, saying ‘something in the back of my mind said, “something is going to happen, just keep trying, don’t give up, just persevere”’ (LM, March 2019). Katrina also faced obstacles in her application to her ‘dream program’, partly because of challenges in gaining the requisite volunteer work because of her paid work requirements. To be accepted, she notes, ‘you need a certain grade, you need volunteering, you need reference letters, your first-born child (laughs). Which is actually, my first born is easier than the volunteering’ (FI, February 2019).

Perhaps because of such challenges, these students had ‘back up plans’. For example, one of our five students took a term-time job where she could easily transfer locations, in case she decided to leave university and move to a less expensive city to work. She describes the importance of being open to change:

I don’t really think life is a linear path and you never – and if you are so focused on one direction, you could lose sight of something where you are actually meant to be. And as well too if you are constantly trying to achieve one goal, I think you kind of end up burning out. But if another path opens, and it flows, then maybe that is what you are supposed to do . . . (FI, October 2019)

Another student was exploring the range of health-related career opportunities requiring credentials from a technology institute as well as university. A third student was accepted to a programme offered jointly with a technology institute, which had the benefit of more ‘hands on’ experience, a small cohort, and more supportive accessibility practices. This student was in the process of identifying ‘transferable skills that [career employers] might see as an asset’ as she prepared to apply for cooperative education positions:

I feel like the [food and beverage position] was such an important job in the sense of just understanding how even just a job works even in a corporate network. Like me, I moved up to become a supervisor and those supervising skills are super important. And if I wanted to be a PI [principal investigator] in a lab I am going to have to learn how to: a) work with a small team and then, b) be able to organize a group of people. (FI, October 2019)

Similarly, her work experience as an election poll worker was reframed as learning ‘how to deal with people with strong political views’. In general, it was apparent that financially insecure students have developed strategies related to adaptability and self-advocacy at school and at work.

These tactics are needed because the university was perceived to do little to advocate on their behalf. The lack of care, mixed messages, and inconsistent approaches across programmes and faculties since COVID-19 (referenced in the previous section) are very familiar to financially insecure students. Even before the pandemic, they had experienced ‘carelessness’, rooted in the institutional denial of vulnerability and interdependency, and manifested in a lack of resources for care work as well as inflexible policies and practices (Lynch 2010; Tronto 2010). In particular, students with disabilities confronted insufficient and inadequate institutional resources – issues acknowledged by scholars of disability in higher education (for example, Dolmage 2017).

For these students, transitions to university were challenging and support was impersonal and difficult to access. One student approached a university centre to seek counselling and was given ‘pamphlets on someone you can talk to’. Another student moved from a high school where her grades were in the high 90s, to university where she achieved 60s and 70s. In addition to moving away from home and having to care for herself as a working student, she felt that the academic accommodation provided for her disability was inadequate. Further, she ended up couch surfing for a couple of months, requiring her to quit her job. The extra financial strain added to her worry about how to pay for summer courses. Her housing and work insecurity did not improve until her second year, which impacted her academics.

All five students expected to graduate with debt. While Canadian students take for granted the high cost of higher education, Aleah questioned this common sense:

In [home country], universities, good universities are free for students, like the top students . . . so, sometimes I say, ‘what if I stayed in [home country] . . . I could have saved about $100,000 . . .’ (FI, May 2020)

Instead, she expects to graduate with Cdn $50,000–60,000 of debt.

As noted, governments and higher education systems contribute to student insecurity to varying degrees, through their student finance policies and practices (Liu, Green, and Pensiero 2016; Garritzmann 2016). The Canadian student finance system of loans and bursaries is challenging to navigate for students without help. They felt they were penalized for being good financial planners and found the process to be both complicated and uncertain. For example, Helena was required to apply for a loan to demonstrate financial need before applying for grants and bursaries. Her application for the latter was denied once, accepted once, and she was in the process of applying again.

One possible area of university support for financially insecure students is work-integrated learning opportunities; however, these too may be inaccessible. Students requiring accommodations, for example, often prefer to take a lower course load. One student shared: ‘I wouldn’t be able to take the minimum [course load] anymore if I did co-op [cooperative education], which isn’t viable . . . [given] how much time I need to dedicate to my courses, outside of course time’. In addition, this student did not apply to career-related campus jobs because she already had a long commute to campus, the hours were capped at 10 per week, and the ‘pay’s usually not where I need it to be, personally’. Further, these opportunities are highly competitive and grades are often used as a screening criterion.

Although the discourse of student engagement assumes undergraduates who are ready and able to embrace curricular and co-curricular campus life (Stuber 2009), our financially insecure students were already struggling to juggle school, work, and care for self and others. They would like to see more financial support, more flexibility in course planning, and more consistent accommodation for working students. Lucy remarks:

Like I don’t know if professors have this view that working kids, like they’re going through something different than kids that aren’t working. . . . But when you’re working a considerable amount, [it’s important to be able to plan] . . . I found out that one of our projects is a group project and I’m the only one not available on weekends because of [work]. But if I had known a few weeks ahead of time, I would have been like, ‘I’ll book off work for this week and then grab a shift the next week, an extra shift’, right? (FG, January 2019)

Additional attention is needed for students with disabilities given the ableism that is endemic in universities (Brown 2020). Our students shared their experiences of central accessibility offices with long wait times to receive accommodations, high advisor-to-student ratios, and one-size-fits-all accommodations (see Dolmage 2017). Sometimes, experiences with university staff made them feel ‘ashamed’ about their need for accommodations. The emotional labour required was significant but often invisible (see Brown 2020).

Collectively, the five students were dealing with embodied precariousness associated with family illnesses and financial crisis, work–study conflicts, housing insecurity, and disability. Since the pandemic lockdowns began, their experiences have been mixed. When Katrina did not feel safe at work, she was impelled to explore research and teaching assistant opportunities on campus; however, admission to a professional programme continued to be a struggle for her. Aleah, as was her pattern, sought out new entrepreneurial opportunities with her family, and appreciated the elimination of her lengthy campus commute time because of online learning. Lucy was able to secure cooperative education placements in her field in her smaller programme. However, the other two students struggled with a reduction in their work hours along with an increase in academic workload and social isolation. Again, the kinds of care and support offered by the institution and family make a difference.

Conclusion

Constant change and stress in the workplace require workers with resilience. Universities have a key role to play in developing this vital capability. (Holdsworth, Turner, and Scott-Young 2018, 1837)

On the other hand, we might ask: at what point must social arrangements rather than individuals be targeted for intervention (Van Breda 2018)? The preceding discussion suggests that universities must do more to recognize the divergent needs of students and to reduce the need for resilience among the most vulnerable. Student narratives since the pandemic reveal increased precariousness and a growing recognition that student ‘success’ is contingent on a number of factors, including financial security, safe and secure living arrangements, spaces that are conducive to study, access to healthcare, activities that promote well-being, and so forth. For financially secure students, student progress and careers tend to be a ‘family affair’ (Bathmaker 2021), and prior to the pandemic, they appeared to be poised for a ‘magnificent swim out to the horizon’ (Berlant 2011, 117). In comparison, financially insecure students, especially those with additional caring responsibilities, have long been aware that institutional responses to precariousness are unreliable and inconsistent, and supports are often insufficient or inadequate.

My discussion of the situations of different groups of working students before and since the pandemic thus highlights the way universities contribute to the societal crisis of care by perpetuating competitive individualism, the primacy of employability, and lack of accommodation for diverse student needs, including financial insecurity. Universities, like employers, tend to take for granted the conditions and care work that underpins student flourishing, and lack spaces for institutional dialogue about the politics of care (Tronto 2010). Further, Canadian universities have collectively failed to challenge student finance regimes that promote inequities and precariousness for many students.

So where do we go from here? Some writers argue for a more expansive model of human capital in higher education that is based on the capabilities approach developed by economist Amartya Sen (Brown, Lauder, and Cheung 2020). This model imagines an education that builds individual and social capabilities and allows people to take control of their lives and contribute to society in different ways (Taylor, in press). Other writers propose that educators, employers, and governments should adopt a more complex view of employability that recognizes and addresses differences in personal circumstances and provides greater support for those who are disadvantaged in education and labour markets (McQuaid and Lindsay 2005). Regarding student finance, writers acknowledge that the higher education participation gap could be addressed by public policy tools like income-contingent maintenance grants and targeted assistance for students from working-class backgrounds (Findlay and Hermannsson 2019; Bathmaker 2021).

The findings reported here suggest that the university could also do more to recognize the divergent situations of students in its role as an employer providing work-integrated learning opportunities. Greater emphasis on developing an ethics of care in higher education would reduce the need for students placed at a disadvantage to be resilient. To more directly address financial insecurity, students could be provided with the ‘gift of time’ to realize their learning and life goals, through equity enhancing changes in student finance (Taylor and Taylor-Neu, forthcoming). The idea of education as a gift is bound up with a societal vision that acknowledges our interdependence, that values care, and that prioritizes people as more than workers (Precarias a la Deriva 2006). As the most serious effects of the pandemic dissipate, we have an opportunity to reflect more deeply on the implications of our shared precariousness and to develop a new imaginary for more liveable lives.

Ethics note

The research study on which this paper is based received Ethics approval from the Behavioural Ethics Research Board, University of British Columbia (BREB #H17-02717).

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Catalina Bobadilla Sandoval for her careful research assistance on this paper and Sameena Karim Jamal for her administrative and coordination work on the research project overall. Thank you to other research team members and to Robyn Holly Taylor-Neu for generative discussions. Research assistants Sara Sanabria, Lauryn Rohe, and Maryam Momen helped with data collection in the study, as did my colleague, Hongxia Shan. Thank you to D.W. Livingstone for comments on an early draft. Finally, the author appreciates the constructive comments of reviewers. The author is the Principal Investigator of the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Grant Number 435-2018-0078].

Notes

1 Data activity acronyms are as follows: FG is focus group interview, LM is life mapping exercise, and AD stands for audio diaries – all were conducted over one year. FI refers to follow-up interviews conducted in the second year.