Does working during higher education affect students’ academic progression?

Moris Triventi

Economics of Education Review, 2014, vol. 41, issue C, 1-13

Abstract: This paper examines the effect of working during higher education on academic progression, in terms of number of credits acquired by first-year university students in Italy. We discuss different contrasting hypotheses on the role of employment during university on academic outcomes: the zero-sum perspective, the reconciliation thesis, the positive and the negative selection to work hypotheses. In the empirical part we analyze data from the Eurostudent survey, which collected data on a representative sample of university students who were enrolled in the academic year 2002/03, after the implementation of the ‘Bologna Process’. We use a negative binomial regression model considering work experience as an endogenous multinomial treatment. Results indicate that, conditional on observed covariates (socio-demographic variables, school-related and university-related variables), there is a positive self-selection into employment, especially for low-intensity work. Traditional multivariate regressions show a penalty in academic progression only for high-intensity workers, but once accounted for unobserved heterogeneity also the low-intensity work experience appears to negatively affect academic progression.

Keywords: Student employment; Academic progression; Higher education; Self-selection; Unobservable variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I23 J01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775714000363
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:41:y:2014:i:c:p:1-13

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2014.03.006

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn

More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().