In my Graduation Thesis I researched the problem of unpaid study placements among students at the Faculty of Social Work. In the theoretical introduction, I defined the study placement and its legislation, I went on to describe the financial consequences of the study placement among students. After that, I defined the strategies employed by students when engaging in unpaid placements. Then I moved to describe legislation on student work. I conclude this theoretical introduction by describing the impact of student work and financial stress on academic requirements. In the empirical part, a quantitative methodology is used. The study is descriptive. I formulated six research questions and an equal number of hypotheses. I wanted to investigate how many social work students did not receive reimbursement for transportation expenses, meal costs or monetary rewards during their period of placement, how is this related to their motivation to continue their studies, the financial situation and doing student work. I was also interested in how many students continue to engage in student work jobs during their intensive study placement period and why they choose to do so. With the help of the results, I found that nearly two-thirds of the students (66 %) have never received reimbursement for transportation expenses, meal costs or monetary rewards from their placements. The same percentage of students believe that the study placement has a negative impact on their financial situation. Only 5 % of students do not engage in student work. More than half of the students (54 %) continue to engage in student work even during their intensive study placement period.
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