There is no hiding the association university has with stress; deadlines, class, and the pending doom of an uncertain future have always been part of student life. But for many students in Aotearoa, that experience is increasingly being replaced by exhaustion. Between rising rents, grocery prices, transport costs, and tuition fees, students are balancing full-time study with part-time jobs just to survive. The result is a rising wave of burnout.
According to a 2024 article from Psychology Today, burnout is characterised by emotional exhaustion, declining performance, and physical symptoms caused by prolonged stress. Students experiencing burnout often feel detached from their studies, unable to concentrate, and emotionally overwhelmed.
What makes today’s student burnout particularly concerning is how closely it is tied to economics. Financial stress is no longer secondary to academic life; it has become central to it.
A report from New Zealand’s Ministry of Education found that around half of all tertiary students were working while studying in 2019, with many students working significant hours alongside their courses. While part-time work has always been common among students, the nature of student employment has changed. Work is no longer just supplementary spending money for nights out or textbooks. Increasingly, it is necessary for rent, food, transport, and basic living costs.
The student employment organisation Student Job Search reports that students are now taking on multiple jobs simply to stay afloat financially. Many are working irregular hours across hospitality, retail, and gig economy jobs while trying to maintain full-time study. The organisation notes that the job market has shifted dramatically, with students competing for fewer flexible roles while simultaneously needing more hours to cover living expenses.
For students, this creates a relentless cycle. Study takes time away from work, but work takes time away from study. Sleep, social connection, and personal wellbeing become the first sacrifices. And, with the removal of Fees Free, this is only going to get worse.
The Ministry of Education report also found that once students work beyond approximately 20 hours per week, course completion rates begin to decline. This statistic reveals the difficult threshold many students are crossing. The hours required to financially survive are often the same hours that undermine academic success.
Burnout emerges in this gap between economic necessity and educational expectation.
People facing burnout commonly experience insomnia, chronic fatigue, anxiety, headaches, and difficulty concentrating. Yet despite these warning signs, many students feel unable to slow down. The financial reality of tertiary education leaves little room for recovery. This pressure is particularly intense in cities where rent prices continue to rise faster than student support. For many students, weekly income disappears almost immediately into essentials. After rent, power, transport, and groceries, little remains.
At the same time, universities continue to promote ideals of productivity, networking, extracurricular involvement, and academic excellence. Students are encouraged to build impressive CVs, maintain high grades, volunteer, intern, and prepare for increasingly competitive job markets. The expectation is not simply to pass university but to optimise every aspect of it.
We took to our Instagram to see how Nexus readers feel on the matter:
These statistics reveal just how widespread burnout has become among students. An overwhelming 96 percent of respondents said they had experienced burnout, suggesting that exhaustion is no longer an occasional side effect of university life but something almost expected. The figures also show how deeply employment is embedded in the student experience, with 75 percent of respondents working while studying and over one fifth balancing either full-time work or multiple part-time jobs alongside their degrees.
Perhaps most telling is the connection between stress and money. Only seven percent of students said their stress had nothing to do with finances, while the remaining 93 percent linked at least some of their stress to financial pressure. For a quarter of respondents, finances were the sole source of stress. These numbers reinforce what many students already feel daily: that the cost of living crisis is not just affecting their bank accounts, but their ability to rest, focus, and succeed academically.
The results paint a picture of a generation attempting to balance impossible expectations. Students are being asked to perform academically while also functioning as workers, renters, and financially independent adults in an increasingly expensive economy. Burnout, then, is not simply an individual inability to “cope” with university pressure. It is a symptom of a system where the financial demands of surviving tertiary education are beginning to outweigh the capacity students have to sustain themselves.
For students already stretched financially, these expectations can feel impossible.
The cost of living crisis also exposes inequalities within higher education. Those without financial safety nets are more likely to work longer hours, experience higher stress levels, and face greater risk of burnout. In this way, burnout is not simply an individual mental health issue. It is structural. When conversations around burnout focus solely on self-care, mindfulness, or better time management, they risk ignoring the economic realities producing the exhaustion in the first place. While strategies like exercise, sleep, and seeking support are important, they cannot fully address a situation where students are fundamentally overworked.
This is not to say universities are entirely ignoring the issue. Many institutions – including Waikato – have expanded counselling services and mental health initiatives in recent years. However, support services themselves are often overwhelmed by demand. Burnout is becoming normalised to the point where exhaustion is almost expected within student culture.
The long-term effects could extend well beyond university. Chronic burnout during young adulthood can contribute to ongoing mental health difficulties, disengagement from education, and reduced career satisfaction later in life. Students pushed into constant survival mode may leave university not inspired or fulfilled, but depleted.
New Zealand’s tertiary system increasingly relies on students balancing both full-time work and full-time study, even though the two are often incompatible at high intensity. The result is a generation of students carrying the weight of economic instability directly into their education.
Burnout, then, is not merely a personal failing or inability to cope. It is a reflection of a broader system where the cost of existing has become incompatible with the demands of higher education. For many students, university is no longer just academically challenging. It is financially exhausting, emotionally draining, and increasingly unsustainable.
