The purpose of this study is to better understand college students' experiences of working while in college with the awareness of potential differences based on students' socio-economic status. Working while in college is a prevalent and necessary activity for most students, and this study aims to examine students' decisions to work, and the benefits and drawbacks of working, from a micro and macro perspective. Drawing from critical social theory, this exploratory, sequential mixed methods study explored student employment experiences, benefits of working, and college success outcomes through 32 phenomenological interviews, and 1,144 College Student Employment Survey respondents at a highly selective, private, non-profit, 4-year institution.

The results from the study showed that students work for financial reasons, but consider working while in college as an important college experience beyond monetary return, such as enhanced academic integration and increased responsible independence. While students identified the nature of the work positions as an important factor when choosing a job, this was considered only after convenience factors such as physical location of the job, number hours of work available, and scheduling.

Students generally found out about their jobs through word of mouth, but significant differences were found between first-generation and low-income students and their continuous-generation, higher-income student counterparts: In addition to word of mouth, higher-income groups reported being tapped by faculty as one of the most common ways of finding out about their work positions, while for low-income students, the job board was one of the prominent ways to find out about their jobs.

Students described the benefits of working while in college that encompassed enhanced academic integration, increased sense of responsibility, enhanced skill development, and increased sense of belonging. Liabilities included stress from having to better manage one's time and the physical exhaustion of working after a long shift. In addition to process outcomes described by students as benefits of working at the micro level, student employment experiences showed positive contributions to student success outcomes at the macro level. Students who experience higher supervisory support in their student employment showed greater student success outcomes in civic contribution, intellectual success, responsible independence, trajectory towards graduation, and better labor market positioning. Experiencing community connections and increased faculty and staff interaction due to working while in college also showed positive associations with student defined success outcomes. While stress from work and physical exhaustion were noted in the phenomenological interviews and descriptive survey results, these liabilities did not have a significant association with any of the success outcomes.

Implication for prospective students, higher education professionals, and research is offered to consider student employment as a co-curricular activity that is educationally enhancing aligned with the purpose of higher education.