Earning to Learn: Working while Enrolled in Tennessee Colleges and Universities

While some students choose to work while enrolled in college, others may have no choice but to work, even if work may be detrimental to their chances of succeeding in college. Leveraging 17 years of statewide student-level records from Tennessee, we examine the relationship between working while enrolled and degree completion, time-to-degree, credit accumulation, and GPA. We aim to increase our understanding of how the timing and intensity of work relate to student outcomes and to explore how these relationships differ by college sector, industry of employment, and student characteristics. We find consistent negative associations between work and academic success, especially at higher levels of work intensity. Working students attempt and earn fewer credits and are 4-7 percentage points less likely to complete college. Among completers, working students take longer to graduate, even though they earn similar GPAs and complete their attempted credits at similar rates to non-working students.