Students who work while enrolled in college are about 20% less likely to complete their degrees than similar peers who don’t work — a large and meaningful decrease in predicted graduation rates. Among those who do graduate, working students on average take more than half a semester longer to finish. This is mainly because students who work large amounts – over 15 hours a week – take fewer college credits per semester.
Celeste Carruthers, William F. Fox Distinguished Professor of Labor Economics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, worked with research colleagues from Florida State University and Vanderbilt University on the study that produced these findings, which was recently published by the American Education Research Association. Read the full article on The Conversation.
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