University students facing excessively heavy workloads and responsibilities in their part-time jobs that interfere with their academic studies is an increasingly serious problem that calls for prompt action by all relevant parties. Behind the problem is the tightening financial conditions of many students who need to earn money to pay their tuition and other expenses, and certain employers' growing dependence on low-cost part-time workers to run their operations. In the worst cases, students reportedly find themselves failing to advance even though they originally took their job so they could keep up with their studies.

In a recent online survey by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, the first of its kind, about 60 percent of the 1,000 university and graduate school students polled said they experienced troubles over working conditions in their part-time jobs, ranging from being forced to show up for shifts other than they agreed to when they were hired, to unpaid overtime and being forced to work long hours without breaks.

Even though labor laws and regulations oblige employers to give employees written documentation of their work conditions, including wages, only 41 percent of the students polled were provided with such paperwork, while 19 percent said they were not even verbally given concrete explanations about their employment conditions. About 18 percent of the respondents said their workload encroached on their studies.