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Extracurricular activities are an important part of student life. Some offer a bit of fun, such as Exeter University’s Hide and Seek Society and the London School of Economics’ Hummus Society. While controversial, some serve to strengthen elite networks, such as Oxford University’s infamous Bullingdon Dining Club, which was attended by former Prime Minister David Cameron and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Others include the Footlight Drama Society of Cambridge University and the University of Manchester. mancunion The student newspaper has inspired notable careers. Nobel laureate and former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz credits the Amherst College debates with helping him discover public policy.
In fact, extracurricular activities are becoming increasingly important as a means for students to acquire workplace skills such as teamwork, communication, and leadership, and to differentiate themselves from their peers in an environment of academic achievement inflation. For example, hackathons are a great way to learn entrepreneurial skills by doing, and employers value this. For universities, the extracurricular activities offered by their faculties and student organizations are therefore becoming an increasingly important element of their student offers.
Such activities are also an opportunity to network with students from other courses, and course-related co-curricular and co-curricular activities help students apply knowledge learned in class without the constraints of assessment. . Makerspaces and living labs are great ways for students to experiment in groups. This is also to allow students to take more risks and express their creativity without the pressure of assessment. Additionally, by giving students greater access to equipment and technology not available in their undergraduate programs, they can improve the technical skills that are so important to employers of STEM graduates. It’s relatively easy to upgrade your engineering department’s machine tool space to accommodate 3D printers and electronics, and it can be used very flexibly to host demo days, poster sessions, and other events.
A new report reveals that almost half of graduate students do not feel a sense of belonging within the student community. Current undergraduates, on the other hand, received most of their secondary education online. This increases the need to promote face-to-face activities to provide a sense of belonging and reduce loneliness, especially among first-year college boys, who have the highest suicide rates. With the academic jump from school to university being a major trigger, along with social isolation and increased alcohol consumption, it is important to understand that these more vulnerable students, especially given the growing debate over universities’ duty of care, Including them in extracurricular activities can have positive benefits. Various recent academic studies suggest that students who participate in extracurricular activities exhibit greater persistence in pursuing their goals, which is strongly associated with psychological well-being and academic success.
However, we need to ensure inclusivity for everyone. Several studies have found that older students and ethnic minority students generally spend less time on extracurricular activities in college and are more likely to pursue family, religious, or solitary activities instead.
Meanwhile, students from lower socio-economic status are spending more time at work, with the Sutton Trust predicting that the number of students living at home will increase from 41% in 2019 to 64% in 2021. It is pointed out that there are. Worsened by Covid. These students are far less likely to fully integrate into university life, the report found.
One solution may be to provide more personalized support for accessing extracurricular activities through students’ guidance advisors. You can also do even more with online “bite-sized” activities. This means they are often short courses that allow you to earn certificates in a variety of interesting topics not covered in the curriculum, and can be the first step towards new hobbies and interests.
From my own experience of running extracurricular activities, there is a lot of interest from overseas students who see extracurricular activities as an opportunity to get better fees. With pressure to recruit international students to fill funding gaps, universities need to do more to promote in their marketing materials the extracurricular activities they offer and ways to supplement students’ academics.
Fostering this sense of belonging has material benefits for the university long after tuition has been paid. A recent study found that extracurricular participation was much more strongly associated with alumni giving than degree classes earned. The more involved alumni were in these activities during their college years, the more likely they were to donate. Approximately 10 percent of those who participated in one or two activities continued to donate, and for those who participated in three or more activities he rose to 22 percent.
In other words, a university’s investment in extracurricular activities is likely to be paid back many times over.
Robert Phillips is a Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at the Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester.
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