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Student Employment and Persistence: Evidence of Effect Heterogeneity of Student Employment on College Dropout

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Abstract

This study explores how student employment affects college persistence and how these effects differ by individual likelihood of participating in student employment. I analyze data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 using propensity score matching and stratification-multilevel analysis. This study finds that engaging in intense work has deleterious effects on college persistence. However, these negative effects vary significantly according to likelihood of participation in intense work. The results indicate that employment has less negative impacts on completion for those most likely to participate in intense work, who are typically those from the most disadvantaged social backgrounds. This finding suggests that efforts to reduce the deleterious effects of intense work on persistence should be practiced with careful consideration for sub-populations that may have different reasons for and effects of student employment.

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Notes

  1. The terms “effect” and “impact” in this study indicate an association or relationship between employment and dropout and do not imply a causal relationship. Propensity score matching depends on the ignorability assumption, which is the assumption that there are no additional confounders between treated and untreated units conditional on set of pretreatment covariates. However, there is always the possibility of unobserved factors that may simultaneously affect both treatment and outcome.

  2. This study defines three sets of counterfactual scenarios and all analyses are separately conducted for each sub-sample. While the intense versus anything else model includes all individuals, the intense versus moderate model does not include no-work individuals. Likewise, the intense versus no-work model does not include moderate work individuals.

  3. The mean dropout rate of the sample in this study is about 14% (see Table 1), which is lower than the national rate for first to second year retention. For example, the national first to second year retention rate of four-year colleges in 2005 was about 70% (ACT Institutional Data File, 2005). This gap is largely due to the fact that my sample do not include transfer students as dropout cases. If I include transfer students as dropout cases, the mean dropout rates of this sample increase to 25%. I conducted supplementary analyses including transfer students as dropouts, and the results were similar to the findings of this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Studies Education, Korea National University of Education, 250 Taeseongtabyeon-ro, Gangnae-myeon, Cheongju-Si, Chungbuk, 28173, Korea

    Yool Choi

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  1. Yool Choi
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Correspondence to Yool Choi.

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Choi, Y. Student Employment and Persistence: Evidence of Effect Heterogeneity of Student Employment on College Dropout. Res High Educ 59, 88–107 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9458-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9458-y

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