Students are being forced to choose between unpaid work placements and a roof over their heads, while others have suffered stress-induced heart attacks, campaigners have claimed.
Last week students, and workers across Australia rallied against ‘placement poverty’ – a term they use to describe lengthy periods of unpaid work by students and graduates which provides industry training, ahead of entering a profession.
They demanded equal treatment for those undertaking unpaid work placements, and called on the government to either fund or outlaw unpaid placements, which mainly affect social work, nursing and teaching.
Isaac Wattenberg, from Students Against Placement Poverty (SAPP), said students were feeling the pressure, burning the candle at both ends while trying to continue their education.
“A lot of students aren’t able to undertake their placement because if they did, that would mean they would face homelessness,” he said.
“We have a whole collection of stories of students who have had anxiety attacks, or someone told us they had a stress-induced heart attack while on placement.”
SAPP also called on the government to update accreditation requirements to take into account prior learning and professional experience.
It is completely unreasonable to expect students studying social work to have to forego their income for six months in order to complete their degree.
In professions such as nursing, teaching and social work, unpaid placements are a standard requirement for students, requiring graduates who can connect with and serve diverse communities.
However, these unpaid placements often favour students with exisiting financial support, and according to the Australian Services Union (ASU) limit the diversity of experiences and perspectives among graduates.
Angus McFarland, the NSW & ACT secretary of the ASU, was at the rally on Friday outside the Commonwealth Parliament Offices in Sydney, asking for fairness and equity in education and employment practices, and said it was unfair to expect students to undertake extensive unpaid placements.
Students protest outside the Commonwealth Parliament Offices on Friday. Photo: SAPP.
“It is completely unreasonable to expect students studying social work to have to forego their income for six months in order to complete their degree,” he told Central News. “Unpaid placements require students to not earn an income at a period of their placement.”
However, Brendan McCormack, head of school and Dean of the Susan Wakil School of Nursing and Midwifery at University of Sydney, warned there was a danger of misrepresenting what school based placement was about.
“It is a really complex area and not a simple solution,” he said. “It requires a lot of work to address the issue.
“Some of the student organisations, student unions and some of the commentators have used the language of unpaid work and it’s really a very dangerous language to be using.
“Because if the idea is that students are seeing this as as work and that they’re not getting paid for work, then it’s a misrepresentation of what the purpose of their clinical (nursing) practice is.”
Students on placement follow university protocols, with facilitators supporting them to ensure they meet competencies associated with their unit of study. The students have rights within their programme of study, but are not regarded as employees of the company they are placed with.
If we go down the route of paying students for practice learning, then we are in serious danger of undermining the focus and purpose of these times, as it’s about learning.
Students legally must do a placement as part of their education and McCormack said there were other options for helping students take part, such as pushing for more bursaries and scholarships.
“If we go down the route of paying students for practice learning, then we are in serious danger of undermining the focus and purpose of these times, as it’s about learning and actually they start to become employees of the hospitals et cetera, where they’re working,” he said.
“I think it would be fair to say that universities generally are working hard at trying to influence that agenda and influence politicians, policy and decision makers to address it and come up with a model that can actually really help.”
The Universities Accord 2023 discussion paper, which recommends paying for placements, said students across Australia face mounting financial pressure, with soaring rents and living costs acting as a barrier to taking on or finishing a university degree and the required placements.
McFarland said there needed to be a broader discussion of how these challenges affected both students’ physical and financial well-being.
“This deprives them of money to support their housing, their rent, their family, their food, their transport, and it actually pushes people into poverty and pushes them out of doing these important degrees,” he said.
He added, because placements involved work-based learning, it was important to pay students as workers and protect them the same way workers are. This included recognition of obligations in the workplace, health and safety, and the ability to seek the support of a union or tribunal if they had issues with their placement.
Main images supplied by Students Against Placement Poverty.
