*Professor and BOS, Department of Adult & Continuing Education, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India
**Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Economics, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India
India has rich natural resources but due to lack of trained man power the country has facing the poor economy as one of the major problems. Education plays a pivotal role in creating the human resource capital and make use of this as capital in the economy. Educational structure in India operates at all conceivable levels from Pre School to Post doctoral. The enrollment of the students in higher educational institutions is gradually increasing. Majority of the PG students are from rural & poor economic back ground. Their parents are not able to provide economic support to their children to have higher education and also in the age of 20 years they feel shy to ask money from their parents with. Increasingly, postgraduate students enrolled are turning to part-time paid employment to help fund them through their studies. Earn while you learn is the new trend among college students. Instead of whiling away their leisure time students work on part time basis as contract lecturers, teachers in private schools, tutors in homes, news readers and in restaurants and others to earn some money to support their education. This also helps them acquire experience and make them industry-ready. This is often thought of as a win-win situation, where employers benefit from a flexible, cheap and intelligent pool of labor, and students are able to work to help finance their studies. While it is accepted that work experience is a vital part of skills acquisition. With an increased focus on employability and post-education career opportunities in recent years, the relationship between work experience and higher education study has to be scrutinized and to be better understood. In view of this, the present study was undertaken to explore the experiences of postgraduate students undertaking part-time work in Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. The objectives of the study are to study the profile of the students to know the type of employment that the students are doing and to identify the reasons for doing part time employment. The findings of the study acknowledge that part-time paid employment is increasing and being used as a strategy for students to deal with the increasing costs of higher education. The findings of the study and suggestions made by the investigator were presented in the paper.
Post Graduate Students, Employment, Economic Development
