Abstract
This contribution investigates students’ time budget across 28 European Higher Education Area member countries from a (descriptive) comparative perspective and it provides an in-depth analysis for Hungarian students. Whether students spend more time in direct interaction with teaching staff, or studying on their own, reflects the varying requirements set by different types of higher education institutions, fields of study, and study programmes. Additionally, time investments vary among different groups of students. Paid work gains importance and comprises a larger part of time budget among the following groups: older students, students without higher education background or so-called first generation students whose parents did not attain higher education credentials, students having entered higher education with a delay and students enrolled in other types of higher education institutions than universities (e.g. Universities of Applied Sciences). Moreover, a mismatch between paid work and studies raises the likelihood of experiencing time conflicts. Our findings highlight the role that working alongside studies plays in creating and perpetuating inequalities between students.
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Notes
- 1.
These are Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and United Kingdom.
- 2.
For more information, please consult http://www.eurostudent.eu/about/organisation.
- 3.
See http://database.eurostudent.eu/. From 2021 on, some of the EUROSTUDENT member countries will grant access to the surveys’ micro-data, access will the provided by the research data center of the German Centre for Higher Education and Science Studies, see https://www.fdz.dzhw.eu/en.
- 4.
Detailed information on methodology including questionnaires, fieldwork and data processing instructions as well as national deviations are available for public in DZHW ed. 2018 and in the project’s website (http://www.eurostudent.eu/, also providing a wide range of publications).
- 5.
For information on the EUROSTUDENT target group, please refer to DZHW 2018, p. 21 which can be downloaded here http://www.eurostudent.eu/download_files/documents/EUROSTUDENT_VI_Synopsis_of_Indicators.pdf.
- 6.
Students are grouped according to the highest educational attainment of at least one of their parents. In EUROSTUDENT, students with higher education background have parents of which at least one has attained a tertiary education degree. In terms of ISCED 2011, this means that at least one of these students’ parents has successfully completed a short cycle tertiary degree (level 5), a Bachelor’s (level 6) or Master’s degree (level 7), or a doctorate (level 8) or their national equivalent. Students without higher education background have parents whose highest educational degree is no higher than ISCED 2011 level 4 (post-secondary non-tertiary education) (DZHW 2018, p. 15).
- 7.
In EUROSTUDENT, types of higher education institution are characterised based on national legislations. Usually, if a higher education institution is allowed to award doctoral degrees, it is classified as university. Other types may, if existent and depending on national legislation, include universities of applied sciences, polytechnics, professional higher education institutions etc. (see DZHW 2018, p. 15). In Iceland, Italy, Georgia, Romania; Serbia, Sweden, and Turkey, only one type of higher education institutions exists.
- 8.
For more information on methodology, please refer to Hámori et al. 2019.
- 9.
Considering that time for attending organised classes is more or less fixed, we deemed the time available for self-study and paid work as being autonomously managed by the students. Schmidt et al. (2010), in a study of students in the field of health and medicine in the Netherlands, found that self-study time is more relevant for a successful graduation than attending classes. While concluding that higher number of lectures in the curriculum resulted in a lower graduation rates and longer accomplishment times of study programmes, they suggested that the more time available for self-study activities, the higher chance they have to process high amount of information indispensable for successfully passing examinations. As they propose, lectures, in fact, serve useful functions in the curriculum but, at the same time, they hinder the necessary individual study activities due to the limited time at the students’ disposal.
- 10.
There is no significant difference by study level anymore. This suggests that the possible reason why they have more free time for personal study is not the differing curriculum but the fact that Master’s students have more opportunities to find a job that is related to their studies (or requiring a degree they already attained through previous studies). However, as in this model only working students are included, this may introduce a selection bias and thus can partly bias the comparison with the previous ones.
- 11.
In separate models, we have tested how paying a tuition fee or receiving a study grant impacted the study experience with regard to time budget among Hungarian students (because of missing answers, these models were tested with a considerably lower number of respondents.) Most importantly, these financial resources did not interfere with the effect of various aspects of term-time work as observed in the models introduced above. Paying a tuition fee raised the chance of experiencing a time conflict when the match between studies and work was not controlled for. Receiving a grant or other public student support lowered the odds of experiencing a time conflict only when no exact workload was included. At the same time, these factors somewhat altered the significance of effects of some study characteristics like, e.g., study intensity, field or level of study, but did not change the observed importance of financial background. Due to space limitations, we do not include the detailed tables here.
- 12.
An obvious limitation of the analysis is the cross-sectional nature of data which, from a methodological point of view, makes it impossible to make far-reaching conclusions about causal relationships. However, both the plausibility of the suggested causal direction (i.e. term-time work causing time conflict and not experiencing time-conflict pressures students to engage in further activities), as well as our results being in line with findings of other researchers, support the consistency of the models tested.
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Vögtle, E.M., Hámori, Á. (2020). Students’ time budget in European comparative perspective. Results of the 6th round of EUROSTUDENT and an in-depth analysis of the Hungarian student survey. In: Großmann, D., Engel, C., Junkermann, J., Wolbring, T. (eds) Studentischer Workload. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-28931-7_6
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