The lived experiences of work integrated learning placement for low socioeconomic undergraduate students at an Australian university

Despite successive Australian governments supporting a widening participation agenda to increase the diversity of the higher education student population and graduates entering the workforce, students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, continue to face unequal graduate employment outcomes and disadvantage post-graduation. These students typically face a multitude of personal, structural, and societal constraints whilst studying at tertiary level. As this study will show, these very constraints can also impose barriers to developing their employability, including their experience of Work Integrated Learning (WIL) placements. This study was conducted at a large urban university located in Melbourne, Australia. It focused on the experiences of undergraduate students from low SES backgrounds in WIL placements. Work Integrated Learning has been shown to be a proven strategy to enhance graduate student employability and employment outcomes. This study not only examines the challenges that these students experience in obtaining (includes finding and securing) and whilst undertaking a placement, but also, (by taking a strengths-based perspective) the enablers of WIL for this cohort. It discovers, from rich insightful interviews, the employability outcomes that these low SES students experience as a result of their WIL placements. This study then analyses these insights through the lens of a contemporary conceptual model of employability. To elicit a deep understanding of both the context of low SES and WIL and of the meaningful experiences arising from this context, the study adopted a mixed methods approach (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). The first phase consisted of an online questionnaire of undergraduate low SES students across all colleges of the university. It gained broad insights into these students’ experience of WIL placement and identified the factors that had the greatest impact upon their experiences. The second phase involved semi-structured interviews being conducted with a smaller cohort of these low SES students. By illuminating the ‘voice’ of the student, this multiple-case study provides a rich and detailed exploration of the broad insights of the first phase. The results from both phases were analyzed using a Graduate Capital Model (Tomlinson, 2017), a contemporary, multi-dimensional model of employability that draws upon Bourdieu’s (1986) highly influential capitals theory. Tomlinson’s (2017) conceptualization of employability recognizes that it must be placed within a broader social and cultural context and that the ways in which students construct their employability is influenced by their backgrounds, and the capitals and opportunities available to them. Analysis of the findings shows that the convergence of graduate capitals (Tomlinson, 2017) has a significant impact on low SES students’ WIL placement experience. Whilst a lack of capitals can pose challenges to obtaining and undertaking WIL placement, a student’s possession of different forms of capital, for example, psychological capital such as resilience, persistence, or human capital such as skills and prior experience can also act as enablers. Further, for those students who do successfully complete a WIL placement, through drawing upon their strengths, such as persistence and resilience, they overwhelmingly experience positive employability outcomes. Work Integrated Learning placement has the potential to strengthen undergraduate low SES students’ employability capitals and to enable informed career decision making. However, the study’s results demonstrate that these students need additional support to obtain suitable WIL placements as part of their studies and to have a positive experience whilst undertaking placement. Based on the findings, a number of recommendations are presented to inform the planning and policy development of proactive and targeted strategies that enable low SES students to have the same opportunities to benefit from a WIL placement experience, and for confident transition into the professional workplace. It is anticipated that the insights generated can also be a catalyst for further systemic change within industry, whereby host organizations are encouraged to make low SES-inclusion a priority for the provision of WIL placement opportunities and a positive WIL placement experience.