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Models for poverty research: understanding the university student experience
Judith Bessant
Social Policy and Advocacy Research Centre, Australian Catholic University
Contact Email: J.Bessant
patrick.acu.edu.au
In this paper successive theories of poverty are applied to the findings of research carried out in 2002 to establish how the student experience of studying at university or TAFE was influenced by the level of their economic resources. The data indicates that many found it difficult financially and were working significant hours to ‘pay their way’. That research highlights, in conjunction with similar findings in other studies (Long and Hayden, 2001; LaTrobe University, 2000; Turale, 2001) that poverty has consequences for a student’s capacity to study effectively and to participate in a range of campus based socio-cultural and political activities.
I begin the paper by considering the heuristic value of ‘a Rowntree-Henderson approach’ to understanding student poverty. The question is asked whether the construction of a ‘poverty line’ and establishing objective measures of poverty helps to grasp the experience of many university students in the early 2000s. I then turn to Townsend’s (1979) model where he makes a distinction between absolute and relative poverty to see what useful insights his approach provides for contemporary research into student poverty. Thirdly, I consider the relevance of more recent thinking that uses the language of participation and social exclusion (Jones and Smith, 1999). Finally I consider the value of the constructivist approach with its emphasis on language, (particularly the function of metaphors) and the generative role of researchers, and ask what heuristic value this last model has for appreciating the experiences of contemporary university students. I argue that more attention should be paid to the role of constructive schemes in policy research generally and in poverty research more specifically.
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Copyright © 2003 Social Policy Research Centre.
