How Students Against Placement Poverty can force real change

It’s time to end placement poverty. Students in a growing number of degrees are dropping out or being forced into poverty due to the insurmountable barrier of mandatory unpaid placements. Students Against Placement Poverty is a student-led campaign that has built opposition to this status quo from the ground up, and with continued pressure a win is potentially around the corner. 

As it stands, degrees like social work, nursing, teaching and other ‘care’ sectors require students to go through months-long blocks of unpaid work to complete their degrees. Students in law, engineering and similar fields also have to take on unpaid internships or ‘professional development’ courses to get a job in their industry. All this while gathering a growing HECS debt, meaning students are effectively paying universities for the privilege of being exploited. 

SAPP and students everywhere must build momentum towards a national student placement strike. We cannot compromise or accept meaningless platitudes and meagre reforms – this is not a negotiation!

These placement requirements mean that students who can’t live at home or who don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to support themselves are forced into 60-hour (or more) working weeks. This, or face skipping meals, avoiding medical expenses, or as many students are now doing, dropping out of their degree with nothing to show for their hard-earned debt. 

SAPP has campaigned against this grim reality by mobilising students across the country to take action on their campuses and beyond. There are now organised branches of SAPP in Sydney, Newcastle, Brisbane, and Melbourne, with thousands more people showing support for the campaign online after it gathered national media attention. The campaign was invited to contribute to the National University Accords process in 2023, which led to a further roundtable event in Canberra with federal Greens representatives and crossbenchers, and presentation to a national Senate inquiry. The interim and final reports of the Accords included recommendations on funding for placement support – a result which many students saw as a major win. 

Unfortunately, as union members and activists know all too well, recommendations on paper and representations in parliament are meaningless if they don’t translate to real change. The federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare, has said publicly that financial support for placement students is “not a priority” for this term of government or this year’s budget. This is why SAPP has been working hard to get students organised and mobilised in connection with unionists in the relevant sectors to put continued pressure on the government from below. We know that students are angry about being forced into poverty or out of study, and we know that momentum is growing for change. But it will only happen if we force the hand of those in power through coordinated disruptive action. 

We know the roots of our exploitation lie in the capitalist system which oppresses all workers. It is this system which turns our labour into nothing but profit for the wealthy and powerful.

Recent rallies in Sydney and events across the country during the SAPP National Week of Action showed that students are willing to take to the streets, and that unionists will back them all the way. Members of the Australian Services Union, the NSW Teachers Federation, the NSW Nurses & Midwives Association, and representatives from the CFMEU, MUA and other unions showed up to our Sydney rally in a powerful display of solidarity. With the National Union of Students and various student unions also supporting SAPP as part of the broader campaign against student poverty in general, we have built a movement with real strength. With this strength, the possibility of a national student placement strike is steadily building. It is only through this kind of industrial disruption – by refusing to uphold a system that relies on our exploitation – that students can force the changes that are urgently needed. 

To build a student strike wave that can stand on its own, we know there is still a huge amount of work to be done. Building solidarity across campuses, across sectors, and between students unionists and trade unionists is crucial, as deep networks of support and mutual aid are needed to ensure students can maintain a strike that can win and avoid punishment or academic penalty. Building a class consciousness amongst students is also critical, as we cannot let the fight end at placement support. 

This is why SAPP members have supported or organised contingents to May Day this year and previous, to rallies in support of a free Palestine, to student actions against rape on campus, and to various other actions throughout the life of our campaign. We know the roots of our exploitation lie in the capitalist system which oppresses all workers. It is this system which turns our labour into nothing but profit for the wealthy and powerful and which relies on patriarchal, racist, colonial and queer-phobic structures to support itself. A movement that mobilises students to take industrial action as unionists, not just as activists, must build a political opposition to this system entirely, otherwise we are simply putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.  

SAPP and students everywhere must build momentum towards a national student placement strike. We cannot compromise or accept meaningless platitudes and meagre reforms – this is not a negotiation! Below are the demands of the campaign, which we should see as the first steps towards deeper, more fundamental change. 

Demand 1: 

Change the requirements set by accrediting bodies which prohibit acceptance of remuneration and limit the flexibility of placement hours

Demand 2: 

Fully fund placement programs through:

• Federal government funding to universities to provide bursaries and grants to students on placement
• Substantially increasing Centrelink student payments and expanding access to all students who are required to do placement hours (including international students)
• Ensuring that major placement agencies (like NSW Health, NSW Department of Education, NSW Department of Communities & Justice, etc) pay students on placement a minimum wage for their hours worked

Our industries and universities rely on our exploitation, so we have the power to cause serious disruption. With an organised network of student unionists willing to strike for change, we present a serious threat to the foundations of this rotten system. We can, and should, demand nothing less than the world.