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College students work for different reasons. Many take jobs to pay tuition and related educational expenses. Others work to afford electronic gadgets (often ones that we, their professors, don't yet know exist). Regardless of the reasons, many professors and administrators consider students' working during college to be an unfortunate distraction from what should be their primary focus: their academic studies.
Nonetheless, next to going to class, work is by far the most common activity in which undergraduates take part. At least two-thirds of students at four-year colleges and four-fifths of their counterparts at two-year colleges work at some point during college, either on or off campus. And, contrary to long-held beliefs, findings from the 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement show that working is positively related to several dimensions of student engagement, especially for full-time students.
Given that policy makers and institutional leaders are looking for low- or no-cost ways to improve student success�especially for part-time and older students and from historically underrepresented groups�it's high time we look for ways to use the work experience to enrich rather than detract from learning and college completion.
Substantial research suggests that working during college is related to acquiring such employer-preferred skills as teamwork and time management. Employment also has the potential to deepen and enrich learning, as is the case when students participate in such "high impact" activities as learning communities, student-faculty research, study abroad, capstone seminars, and internships both paid and unpaid. When done well, those and other high-impact activities require students to connect, reflect on, and integrate what they are learning from their classes with other life experiences. Doing so helps students see firsthand the practical value of their classroom learning by applying it in real-life settings�which, additionally, often helps to clarify their career aspirations.
For more than a century, integrating learning and work along with service has been the mission of the seven federally recognized work colleges in the United States: the College of the Ozarks and Alice Lloyd, Berea, Blackburn, Ecclesia, Sterling, and Warren Wilson Colleges. These institutions meet the eligibility criteria for funds from the Work-Colleges Program administered by the U.S. Department of Education, including featuring work, learning, and service in their educational philosophy; requiring that all students work at least five hours a week (though most students at work colleges average between 10-15 hours); and making student performance on the job as well as the classroom part of the student record. The goal is to help students learn to balance study, service to others, and the demands of their jobs.
Other institutions are pursuing similar ends. The University of Maine at Farmington has created more on-campus jobs to help students see the connections between curriculum and work. Boston's Northeastern University and the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, offer large numbers of high-quality off-campus internships.
As part of a two-day visit to the University of Iowa in 2009, I encouraged staff members in the division of student services to teach their student employees to connect and apply what they were learning in class to their jobs, and vice versa. They subsequently started a small pilot program with students working in different kinds of jobs�clerking at the campus bookstore, assisting at the health center, and answering questions at the residence-hall information desk, to name just a few.
