Supporting Academic Success for Employed Students

By Keenan Hartert, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Biology, Minnesota State University, Mankato

June 12, 2025

Nationally, about 40 percent of full-time and 74 percent of part-time undergraduate students are employed while also enrolled in school, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. From my experience across 4+ years of teaching at Minnesota State University, Mankato, those numbers reflect reality. When I began in 2020, I observed an anecdotal connection between students burdened with heavy employment and struggling in class.

I wanted to get closer to the truth of what I (and others) had suspected, so I did what all researchers do – I collected data and conducted research. I collected student information across three semesters (total of 252 students) after the initial pilot study. We noted a myriad of factors, specifically employment hours per week.

Pairing live class attendance and performance data with the survey results, we determined that two factors were significantly associated with poor class outcomes via Cox Regression: low attendance and high employment, noting their mutual influence as well.

Several things surprised me in the findings. First, I was surprised by the high numbers of students that were working. When I spoke with other faculty about it and asked them to guess what percentage of our students were working more than 20 hours a week, they would answer 10, 15, maybe up to 20 percent. Our data suggested that it was actually closer to 35 percent.

I was also surprised by how many students answered the question we asked about what would happen if something bad happened, do they have a financial support system – a “lifeboat.” Almost 33 percent answered no.

An easy way to combat these findings would be for the students to quit working, but we all know that’s not a possibility for most students. In fact, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 64 percent of college students are employed, and based on our data, they don’t have a choice. It would also deny them real experiences out in the community.

There are a couple of ways that faculty can help these working students. I began by offering something I call Prefect Sessions. The Prefects are built-in to occur during regularly scheduled labs. Since I know that students already have those labs blocked off on their schedule, I deployed past students as peer leaders to coach current students who wanted some extra exam prep after our typical lab experiments finished. This was a volunteer position for the peer leaders, although I do offer one credit of lab supervision for those that want it, but there is no financial compensation. The extra practice was available for all students, but having a chance to get up to speed proved most valuable for those that might have missed class because of work.

The intervention was a success, as students who took advantage of these Prefect Sessions at least once before each exam saw a raw +7% boost on their average exam score, a significant result. More importantly, heavily employed students that used the Prefects saw an 11.6% exam score improvement.

My other recommendation is to have a conversation with your students about their work/class balance. I am extremely in favor of employment for students. I think it’s a great benefit for them to be out in the community, learning skills, and meeting people. I’m also pro-balance though. As I talk to my students, I suggest they consider reducing the number of hours worked to around 10-15 a week if they aren’t meeting their goals in class, or I suggest meeting with me during office/review hours at least once every 2 weeks to get caught up. I also recommend on-campus jobs if possible because those generally provide a bit more flexibility if needed.

However, the best of this study was beyond the data. It was that I was able to see some of the most resilient, hardest-working students from across Minnesota (and the region) grow into leaders and defy the stats. I had students that aced the class, competed in NCAA sports, served in ROTC, and worked over 20 hours. Incredible. I had so many meeting their class goals despite the cards being stacked against them. Stats/Data predict populations, not individuals, and the real magic is in the stories of those who beat the odds. Cancer patients with tough genetic mutations and prognoses who still find a way to remission come to mind. That was the true finding – that they can do it, sometimes needing a bit of support from faculty and staff.