Widening Participation to Higher Education Work Placements: Temporal Challenges

Within the UK, sandwich courses, i.e. degree programmes that include a year spent on a work placement, usually during the third year of a four-year course, are increasingly offered by higher education institutions to maximise the proportion of their graduates moving into employment and, particularly, jobs that are deemed ‘graduate-level’. Indeed, there is evidence of a strong positive correlation between participation in sandwich courses and employment. Although this positive impact is particularly marked for students from non-traditional backgrounds, such students are also significantly less likely to undertake a sandwich course. The article draws on 50 interviews with higher education staff and students to argue that many of the most significant barriers experienced by non-traditional students are related to various temporal challenges. In doing so, it expands the body of work on the frequent mis-match between hegemonic university time and the time of students from under-represented backgrounds. In addition, it argues that non-traditional students are less able than their more privileged peers to take advantage of the ‘slow time’ necessary to undertake a work placement, and that the rhythms of external actors are also relevant when explaining the challenges faced by non-traditional students.