Beyond the compulsory: a critical exploration of the experiences of extracurricular activity and employability in a northern red brick university

ABSTRACT

There has been an increasing emphasis placed on the skills and attributes that university students develop whilst studying for their degree. These ‘narratives of employability’ often construct extracurricular activity (ECA) as an essential part of gaining post-graduation employment. However, these future-oriented drivers of engagement often neglect the role ECAs have within contemporary student life-worlds, particularly with respect to lower-income students. Drawing on a 3-year longitudinal study that tracked a cohort of 40 undergraduates throughout their student life cycle, this paper examines how students in a northern English red brick university understood the purposes of ECA, and how they chose to engage with it. The results suggest ECAs appear to be somewhat stratified in terms of timeliness of engagement and motivation to participate. By extension, the paper argues that those recent attempts to measure and use ECA to narrate future ‘global’ employability are likely to reproduce well-established inequalities. As such, any further pressure to engage with ECAs solely in terms of employability could result in the further marginalisation of lower-income students.

KEYWORDS:

• Extracurricular activities
• higher education
• employability
• student experiences
• student engagement
• social mobility

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the University of Sheffield and especially Julian Crockford and the Widening Participation Research and Evaluation Unit, who host the ‘Sheffield Student 2013’ longitudinal tracking project this paper is based on. We are also thankful Darcey Gillie, Réka Plugor and Márton Ger#x00151; for in-depth discussions on extracurricular activities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. ‘Red brick universities’ are UK higher education institutions that were established in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. They tend to be research-intensive in focus and selective in their student intake.

2. Two interviewees declined to be interviewed in their third year of study.

3. Dylan was on a four-year degree programme.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rita Hordósy

Rita Hordósy obtained an MA in sociology at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and conducted her doctoral research in education at the University of Birmingham. Her research at the University of Sheffield involves following a generation of undergraduate students throughout their university years to gain a better understanding of their experiences.

Tom Clark

Tom Clark is a lecturer in research methods at the University of Sheffield. His main interests are in the broad areas of research methodology, novel applications of social theory, and the impact(s) of social research.