Abstract
A growing number of students are working while in college and to a greater extent. Using nationally representative data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I analyze the effect of working on grades and credit completion for undergraduate students in the United States. Strategies to identify the causal relationship between working and academic performance include student-level fixed effects to control for permanent, unobserved characteristics that may affect both work and study intensity, and system GMM models to account for potentially endogenous relationships between working and academic performance that vary over time. I examine the consequences of working for heterogeneous subgroups, with a particular focus on differences between full-time and part-time students. I find no evidence that students' grades are harmed by marginal work hours, but that full-time students complete fewer credits per term when increasing work.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 38-50 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Economics of Education Review |
| Volume | 38 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2014 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:I am appreciative of funding on this project from the Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration . This paper has been funded, either wholly or in part, with Federal funds from the U.S. Department of Labor under contract number DOLJ111A21738. The contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Labor, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement of same by the U.S. Government.
Keywords
- Educational finance
- Higher education
- Hours of work
- I21
- J24
- Part-time students
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education
- Economics and Econometrics