Combining and Balancing Work and Study on the Eastern Border of Europe

Abstract

There is a vast amount of research in many countries on what motivates full-time students to enter the labor market, and how this affects their future employment, but these phenomena are hardly ever examined from the perspective of university faculties or student job centers, i.e., the other two parties involved. The novelty of this research is that we took into account students’, faculty members’ and student job centers’ perspectives. This article reports on a study that investigated the social and organizational factors of student employment in Hungary. Fieldwork in 16 student job centers and a content analysis of 23 interviews with students and 7 interviews with faculty members were conducted. The qualitative data collected provides detailed information on how students find jobs and combine work with study. According to student perceptions, term-time work contributes to their employability. This study has also identified factors that might lead to an increased dropout rate. Furthermore, research results suggest that the conservative structure of higher education is incapable of reacting to new social challenges.