To think being forced to get a job when a student is ridiculous?

[onedaybabywelbeold]

I am a 29 year old single mum, I have just finished my 3rd year at uni and going into my honours year. I worked for 10 years full time before going back to education. During the term year I receive student loan which is topped up by universal credit. I have about 1100 pounds to do me for the month so it's doable but tight.

Now that uni is finished for the summer I am obviously getting more universal credit to see me through. However, today I had to meet with my work coach and he told me I should be job hunting for a job over the summer and should treat job hunting as a full time job.

I told him that I might struggle to get a job as I can only work during the hours my daughter is in school, I have no one to help me and she finished school for the summer end of June. Also I told him it would be hard to get a job as I would be leaving again in September, to which he suggested I stay in a job whilst at uni as 'you don't really have to do much work until the end of the year'.

To be honest I don't really want to work when at uni, I mean I wouldn't be any better off than I would be on universal credit yet running with a substantial decrease in time so why would I? Honesty I don't understand the point in this, surely it's just wasting employers time as I'm not very serious about getting a job as I don't have the childcare. However, I'm worried that if I don't get a job they'll start reducing my payment.

AIBU to think the system is absolutely fucked?

I'm guessing once OP has a full time graduate job the hours will be known and the pay will cover appropriate childcare. As a lone parent on low income you don't have the flexibility for a lot of zero hours jobs, working evenings in a bar etc as your standard nursery/childminder is closed or needs to be prebooked with set hours. Not everyone can just hire an au pair. I'm not saying don't work but people need to be realistic.

[quote LateAtTate]@SchrodingersImmigrant actually the OP is about how the advisor suggested she keep the job throughout uni. Not just work in the holidays...
Nowhere did OP say she wasn’t applying just that the job has to fit around her daughter ... that and just for the summer might make it hard.[/quote]
Quite.

And I agree with OP that the system is fucked if she is required to spend all day everyday looking for a job while looking after her daughter.

Then presumably find childcare at a few days notice if she is offered a job.

It's amazing how people can magically conjure up available, affordable childcare for the whole summer holiday at short notice.

I presume that the 'you need to get a job' brigade can do that, or they wouldn't be suggesting that OP take this bit of the logistics as sorted.

@LateAtTate

while OP and her disdain for shelf stacking may make her out to be a princess she’s not wrong - if she gets the same amount on benefits and working why should she work?

But she will get more for working. She can earn £293 (£515 if she does not get help with housing costs) per month before it affects her payments. At minimum wage, that's approx 32 hours so one 8 hour shift per week. Surely she can grit out one shift per week at a "boring" job to earn an extra £900 over the three months?

www.gov.uk/universal-credit/how-your-earnings-affect-your-payments

So you're being funded by the govt to the tune of uni fees and universal credit and you're complaining about having to get a job to suport yourself?? Bin the volunteering for now. You need to sort childcare for your dc, like every other parent does. What did you think you'd do with them during holidays? Why should other people have to get jobs and not you?

But it wouldn't be an extra £900 would it?

Op would need to find and pay for childcare in order to look for work, attend interviews and do the imaginary 8 hour shift.

Does everyone on here seriously have no problem with finding affordable, long day childcare ie 10 hours to cover a shift and travelling if a job was local, including the odd day here and there, over the summer holidays at short notice, or are people deliberately choosing not to engage with this logistic?

@tenlittlecygnets

So you're being funded by the govt to the tune of uni fees and universal credit and you're complaining about having to get a job to suport yourself?? Bin the volunteering for now. You need to sort childcare for your dc, like every other parent does. What did you think you'd do with them during holidays? Why should other people have to get jobs and not you?

Well, OP worked full time for 10 years and is now training full-time to do something that is socially useful.

She'll have finished her course by this time next year, so will likely be working full-time for the next 30+ years.

I'd hardly call her 'funded by the government' tbh.

@LateAtTate

if she gets the same amount on benefits and working why should she work?

Really?

But I'm at uni to ensure that I can get a job I will actually enjoy (hopefully) and work as the next 40 years (hopefully) so surely they would rather I concentrate on my studies than juggle everything and possibly fail?

You’re working on the basis that the government really care about whether you have job satisfaction and career development and that they want to help you improve yourself. They don’t. The only thing they care about is whether they have to pay you benefits, and how they can stop paying you benefits as quickly as possible. Their attitude is ‘get a job, any job; if you’ve got time and childcare to study, you’ve got time and childcare to get a job instead of studying and support yourself instead of receiving benefits’.

There seems to be a lot of ‘I suffered and therefore everyone else should suffer too’ attitudes here.
The UK makes it extremely hard for people to retrain and study in later life when they might have dependents or other responsibilities to be concerned about. It’s as if once people have a kid they just have to accept there will be no more personal growth.
I have just finished studying a second degree in a European country where they actually pay students to be at university, which would certainly solve this problem. Something the UK could do with very much!

Exactly. There was someone on the radio this morning going on about the lack of drive to recruit and TRAIN within the health and social care sectors. Mostly because of the short termist attitude of government.

All government wants to do is say they have one less person OFF UC

It takes too long to really train people for it to make a difference in one term of government. So why pay for it, or make sacrifices in other areas, the government actually look at this as a populist stance.

Purely short term thinking. We should be making it as easy as possible for people to retrain into these sectors. They are woefully understaffed.

I had three zero hours contracts throughout my social work degree, and worked through nearly the full three years although I accept I worked less in the final year because it was so full on. The jobs were all in the health and social care fields so also helped me to get a job at the end (and no, it’s not as easy to get a newly qualified job as you might think).

The third year of my degree was by far the most stressed I’ve been in my life (before or since!) but it was worth it. I still had to pay the bills though!

Most students do work alongside their degree.
Do they? No way do/would my kids have been able to work in termtime, one was actually not allowed. Sometimes worked in the summer holiday, but again placements sometimes meant all the jobs were gone by the time they finished. This year for example dd is on a teaching placement til mid July

Most students do work alongside their degree.

Do they?

Yes. This why universities have job shops and policies around recommended hours spent working in part time jobs.

What a disgusting attitude. And the use of the word ‘procreate’ instead of ‘have a child’ shows you up to have some pretty terrible opinions of people who aren’t exactly like you

Wow you sound so spoilt and entitled. WTF do you think students have been doing for years and years. Having a part time job as a student is entirely normal, most of us didn’t sponge off tax payers while moaning about it!

I worked throughout my degree - one job during term time which was evenings, one job during breaks which was days.

Both jobs knew I was a student so employed me accordingly.

I had no kids though! And no other responsibilities.

If you can find a job which pays enough to cover summer childcare (which can be hard to find the closer you get to summer!) then go for it.

But I don't think you're being unreasonable if it feels impossible to juggle - it's hard enough being a working parent and juggling it all, let alone a single parent with studies too.

@ElberethGilthoniel

There seems to be a lot of ‘I suffered and therefore everyone else should suffer too’ attitudes here. The UK makes it extremely hard for people to retrain and study in later life when they might have dependents or other responsibilities to be concerned about. It’s as if once people have a kid they just have to accept there will be no more personal growth. I have just finished studying a second degree in a European country where they actually pay students to be at university, which would certainly solve this problem. Something the UK could do with very much!

It’s not suffering, it’s just part and parcel of retaining and being a parent, both choices which many of us have made. It’s only a short period of time, it’s actually only the summer for the OP where she won’t be at uni or on placement. Some people are acting like she’s been told to do a full time job during term time whilst on placement too! I agree term time work for a single parent is much, much harder but the OP is being told the general expectation is to work during her holidays.

In the context of the original post, that would be true. But to see people accusing a full time parent of ‘sponging’ and being ‘entitled’ is a bit much.
As I say it would be much better if nobody had to work whilst being a student. So instead of being angry at someone not wanting to, why don’t we all work towards a society where that doesn’t need to be the case?

@ElberethGilthoniel

There seems to be a lot of ‘I suffered and therefore everyone else should suffer too’ attitudes here. The UK makes it extremely hard for people to retrain and study in later life when they might have dependents or other responsibilities to be concerned about. It’s as if once people have a kid they just have to accept there will be no more personal growth. I have just finished studying a second degree in a European country where they actually pay students to be at university, which would certainly solve this problem. Something the UK could do with very much!

This is actually the norm, rather than the UK making it specifically hard out of spite. Yes, once you have children, it is usually harder to turn your life 180 degrees, in any sense possible - being it retraining for a new career, taking time off to reflect on your life or just running off into the wilderness. I also have an old classmate in one of these nice European countries who is still a "student" - we are same age, and yes he's been paid to study for almost 20 years now, taking one or two credits per year. There was a limit on how long he could stay financed on a single course of study (I think 12 or 14 years? but may be wrong) so he switched midway without getting a degree (say, from engineering to archaeology). Not an amazing amount, no, but he survives quite comfortably. I don't think it is a healthy system though, it seems to produce quite a few eternal students.

This is exactly what the benefit system is designed for. If OP had no long term exployment prospects she'd be better off looking for a minimum wage starter job, even if it wasn't immediately financially rewarding. This experience could then help her find better work. As it is she'll be graduating from a degree relatively soon and her employment prospects will be completely different.

There is no point her bankrupting herself to pay for childcare so she can do a poorly paid job which will lead her absolutely nowhere. The likelihood of this even been possible is fairly low. Most shelf stacking jobs have unreliable hours which wouldn't fit in with any childcare setting and then add in the need to fit around university hours and leave her time to actually sleep in term time.

As I say it would be much better if nobody had to work whilst being a student.

Would it? I enjoyed the part time jobs I did as a student (even shelf stacking which the OP considers lowly) and gained friendships, life experience and skills with dealing with the public which really helped me when getting graduate positions later. That sounds less relevant for the OP but I don’t think it would have been better for me, or many of my peers, to have never worked until we graduated.

There is no point her bankrupting herself to pay for childcare so she can do a poorly paid job which will lead her absolutely nowhere.

That wouldn’t be happening because UC would pay the majority of the childcare costs. There are other reasons for her not to want to do it, but childcare costs aren’t really relevant here.

Well it seems pretty crazy for someone to be paid for 20 years, where I am it is 5 max.
I would say that for every forever student though, there are likely very many more from less affluent backgrounds who either get to go to university in the first place or who don’t drop out because of money stress. Is that not much more preferable?

Maybe I should have put the word had in bold?
Nobody should have to work as a student. Everyone should be free to do so if they wish.

@a8mint it really depends on the degree requirements.
I don’t think ‘all students work’ is true. Some degree have lots of placements as your DC, others don’t . It depends on the student..