Dear all,
Several questions recently from international MSc students and staff wanting to employ international students.
While we have NO restrictions on students working (though we strongly advise students not to let work get in the way of completing studies on time), the immigration service do.
The exact current wording from immigration for our international MSc students is:
"A student has a limited right to work With a student residence permit you will have the right to work if such work is part of a traineeship required for a degree or is on a research paper required for the studies. You may perform other kinds of work for 25 hours a week on average during the academic term.
You have full freedom to work at the times when your educational institution offers no instruction."
So during holidays e.g. the summer, there are no limitations, but during term times it is limited to 25 hours per week on average. This is usually taken as an average over the whole term.
Hence a student can work full time for part of the term so long as they do not exceed 25 hours per week on average over the whole term.
Work that can directly count towards the degree (in our case Orientation to Research Work or the Pro Gradu) is exempt from the calculation.
If you are planning to work in a research group or planning to employ somebody to work in your group, please take this into account. You cannot legally employ an international student to work full time for the whole of an academic term. It is either the whole term working part time i.e. no more than 25 hours per week on average OR part of the term full time work and the rest with no work such that the average is no more than 25 hours per week.
VBW,
Lloyd