A young woman has unleashed her fury at the idea of having to ‘work for free’ after years at university just to be allowed to graduate or ‘get a real job’.
Yash, 23, a student from Queensland, recently revealed that her psychology degree has left her with high amounts of stress and anxiety.
‘Studying psychology in Australia is a scam and it’s inherently so classist,’ she said.
Psychology students are expected to complete 1,000 ‘client hours’ in unpaid internships over two years, with 200 of those hours being face-to-face.
And she’s not alone – students who study anything related to psychology, social work, nursing, or teaching need to ‘work’ for free before they can apply for paid jobs.
Many students in these fields claim the 2,000+ compulsory hours is ‘impossible’ to complete in the standard time frame of three years without external financial support.
Yash, 23, a student from Queensland, recently revealed that her psychology degree has left her with high amounts of stress and anxiety
Under Australia’s Fair Work Act, students completing vocational placements are not entitled to minimum wage or other benefits because they are not considered employees.
The Australian Department of Education released a report in March 2023 that revealed 62 percent of domestic students take six years to complete bachelor degrees, and 9 percent do not return to university after the first year.
Unpaid internships often cause students to drop out of their degrees or move part-time in order to work an extra job to pay bills.
Yash revealed that it was extremely hard to get through her undergraduate degree and get into her masters.
The mental toll the workload placed on her – and other students – was enough to cause severe burn out and loss of passion.
‘If you’re privileged enough to make it through three years of undergrad and then honours and masters – you’ve essentially spent six years studying, not working a full-time wage, not getting a super, and missing out on the biggest years of compounding in your life.’
The 23-year-old emphasised how exploitative the unpaid labour truly was.
‘It’s my second year doing placement at an organisation that has the funds to pay me to do my job,’ she said.
‘But they’ve been banking on the idea of unpaid labour from university students for so long – so there’s no incentive to change.’
Yash has to complete 1,000 client hours over two years – but it is even harder than it may seem.
She often finds herself showing up for eight hour days with only one contact hour to show for it because of last-minute cancellations.
‘People have to take on an excess of clients and work ourselves to death because of unpredictability.’
‘My fellow students have a higher client load than paid employees because we’re under pressure of getting the hours in.’
‘If we don’t [complete our hours] we don’t get our degree and everything gets pushed back.’
Yash revealed that several of her friends were working around the clock, after hours, on the weekends, and also had hospitality jobs to pay their bills.
‘We have to do so much difficult work even before we get into the work force,’ she sighed.
Thousands who study in fields related to psychology, social work, education, and nursing claim that the 2,000+ compulsory hours is ‘impossible’ to complete in the standard time frame of three years without external financial support
Many agreed with her and claimed they were ‘sick’ and ‘tired’ of compulsory unpaid internships.
‘Uni placements are an exploited labour class in Australia,’ a man said. ‘Not to mention this process ruins your mental health when the profession as a whole is about improving mental health.’
Another woman added: ‘Psychology, social work, teaching, nursing etc are crucial and help fill gaps in those fields yet we get the short end of the stick.’
‘It’s such a flawed system because the people who can’t afford to take years off of full time work to do it are the ones most needed in the field!’ said a third.
Another even revealed how her professors told her to ‘avoid’ having a job while in her honours year.
‘What if you need rent? Or an income to live?’ she asked instead.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk