Student Employment: Advantage or Handicap for Academic Achievement?

We estimate the effects of student employment on academic performance. Performance is measured by grades achieved one and a half years after entering university. We use the amount of financial aid students receive after application as a source of exogenous variation in the probability or being employed to correct for potential endogeneity bias. We find no evidence that student employment is detrimental to academic performance, even for a larger number of hours worked per week. There is significant selection of students into different types of student employment.

Sprietsma, Maresa (2015), Student Employment: Advantage or Handicap for Academic Achievement?, ZEW Discussion Paper Nr. 15-085, Mannheim.