Conflict Between Paid Work and Study: Does it Impact upon Students' Burnout and Satisfaction with University Life

A survey of students enrolled in the post-practicum years of the Property and Construction degree course at the University of Melbourne was undertaken. Students reported working more hours in paid work each week than they spent at university. A measure of burnout designed for use in student samples was tested and found to possess good discriminant validity and internal consistency reliability in the Australian context. The property and construction students were found to have very high levels of burnout compared to professional samples. Future research is needed to identify the causes and consequences of student burnout. The students' time involvement in paid work was inversely related to their time involvement in university. However, the amounts of time spent in paid work and study were unrelated to work-university conflict. The work-university interface was asymmetrical in that the relationship between time spent in paid employment and satisfaction with paid employment was positive, while there was an inverse relationship between time spent at university and satisfaction with university life. Students are cynical about the value of university involvement in the post-practicum years, resent the time demands of university and seek to minimise the time spent on the university campus. Strategies to redress this imbalance are considered.