STUDENT HUSTLING IN NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

In the contemporary neoliberal university, students often enter with expectations of structured academic engagement but quickly encounter a far more complex reality, one that demands competence not only in scholarly pursuits but also in financial management, entrepreneurial improvisation, emotional resilience, and strategic survival. Within Kenyan universities, this experience is particularly pronounced due to rising tuition costs, constrained public funding, and an increasing reliance on student loan schemes such as those administered by the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB). Institutions of higher learning are progressively reconstituting students as consumers responsible for financing and managing their educational trajectories, thereby transforming the university into a marketplace in which academic priorities must compete with basic needs such as housing, food, transport, and digital access. Under these conditions, university life extends beyond intellectual development to become a site of continuous economic negotiation. Across Kenyan campuses, students engage in diverse income-generating activities, including freelance digital work, online entrepreneurship, academic writing, and informal trade such as selling clothing, food, or digital services. The normalization of these hustling practices reflects broader socio-economic dynamics in Kenya, where persistent youth unemployment and economic precarity compel students to seek income well before graduation. Yet this reality stands in tension with humanistic and critical pedagogical traditions that conceptualize education as a collaborative, nurturing, and emancipatory process rather than one governed by constant economic calculation. Drawing on theoretical perspectives such as Vygotsky’s social constructivism and Freire’s pedagogy of care, this paper interrogates how neoliberal rationalities reshape student experiences within Kenyan higher education. It argues that while universities continue to espouse ideals of holistic development, innovation, and transformation, the lived realities of students increasingly reflect a system in which economic survival frequently supersedes intellectual engagement. The need to reconcile academic demands with financial pressures produces what may be understood as a “hidden curriculum”, one that cultivates not only critical thinking but also persistent hustling as a necessary life skill. This paper foregrounds student hustling as an everyday survival strategy and examines its implications for financial stability, emotional well-being, and psychological health. In the Kenyan context, these pressures are intensified by structural inequalities, particularly in access to digital infrastructure and adequate accommodation. Furthermore, the analysis situates student precarity within a broader institutional environment marked by the casualization of academic labor and the expansion of precarious employment among university staff, revealing a shared culture of instability within the university ecosystem. Ultimately, the paper contends that student hustling in Kenyan universities should not be interpreted merely as a manifestation of individual resilience or ingenuity, but rather as a structural outcome of neoliberal transformations in higher education. It calls for renewed engagement with educational philosophies and policy interventions that prioritize dignity, reduce precarity, and create conditions under which students can meaningfully engage in learning without the constant burden of economic survival.