Addressing the Financial of Insecurity Low-income Students

Dreading the arrival of your holiday credit card bills? Now imagine what January must be like for low-income students when their savings may have already been exhausted and there are months until the summer break when they can work full-time.

The rising costs of postsecondary education in Canada coupled with the rapidly increasing cost of living have put more pressure on students' finances. This is especially true for low-income students where a woefully inadequate financial aid system is providing less support to students from low-income families (de Broucker, 2005).

To make up for the gap between savings and their financial aid, most students depend on income from work to pay for their education. In the past 35 years, the employment rate among full-time postsecondary students in Canada has gone up from approximately 20% to 60% (CUSC, 2023; Marshall, 2010; Motte & Schwartz, 2009).

While working can reduce financial anxiety, it can have a negative impact on academic performance (Dundes & Marx, 2006; Mamiseishvili, 2010). Working off-campus for 20 hours a week or more means that working students spend less time on campus engaging in “academically beneficial” activities (Kuh, 2009).

Fortunately, the majority of postsecondary institutions in Ontario have formal programs to promote and facilitate on-campus employment opportunities that provide students with flexible schedules of less than 20 hours per week. This allows them to maintain a healthy work-school balance while making connections between their work and academic pursuits (Taylor & Bobadilla Sandoval, 2023).

In contrast to working off-campus, the flexible and supportive nature of campus employment has been found to have a positive impact on academic success and student engagement (Burnside et al., 2019; Kuh, 2009). Programs that provide low-income students with academically or career-aligned job opportunities and promote reflection on skill development while fostering the fiscal stability needed to ensure students have the financial means to make it to graduation can have a transformative impact. These high-impact work study practices not only contribute to increased retention and graduation rates, there is evidence to suggest that they can also positively impact post-graduation employment opportunities and initial salaries (Perna, 2023).

As a result of their thorough understanding of the unique challenges of low-income students, 75% of the work study initiatives in Ontario are focused on meeting the needs of low-income students. This commitment to mitigating financial insecurity through campus employment, ?allows these institutions and their students to benefit from improved student engagement, retention and career readiness (Perna, 2023).

While there is an established body of work study research in the U.S., there is limited insight into the benefits, challenges, and impact of work study programs in Canada. Thus, I’m interested in hearing from staff and researchers who work at Canadian postsecondary institutions with initiatives that provide students with high quality campus work opportunities. Considering the positive impact work study can have on the lives of students, its imperative that researchers and postsecondary staff work together to improve the success of low-income students.

Additionally, if there are institutions that would like to start or improve their campus employment initiatives, feel free to reach out to me to discuss how a high-impact work study program can reduce financial insecurity and improve persistence and career readiness at your institution.