The right job pays

Teacher shortages are a significant concern in many countries. Hiring pre-service teachers seems a promising strategy to alleviate this problem while providing students an opportunity to develop relevant skills in a real-work context. However, being employed alongside full-time studying might compete with attendance or self-study and, thereby, hinder study progress. This study analyzed the effect of student employment on study progress of 132 pre-service teachers (repeated measures n = 3,245). Employment hours, remuneration (getting paid), domain-relevance, and timing (year of college) were taken into account. Multilevel growth analyses showed that students who spent more time on a paid teaching job in year 3 or 4 obtained significantly more study credits compared to those who did not get paid or got paid for a job outside of education. Overall, student employment did not relate to less study progress and depending on domain-relevance, timing and remuneration, the effect can even be positive.