High Gains, high Risks, for whom? A holistic approach to the Inequalities Of Working While Studying Trajectories (GROW)

Across Europe, 11 million university students (80%) combine their studies with paid employment. A highly relevant question, therefore, is how students lives are affected by student employment in the long run.

Yet, existing segmented research has failed to provide a comprehensive approach to assess the implications of student employment for students later in life: It has remained unclear who gains and risks when working while studying, and under which conditions.

GROW will break with these previous conventional approaches by taking on a holistic approach which will jointly analyse the positive and negative effects of student employment for educational and labour market outcomes.

GROW will bridge segmented theoretical views from psychology, sociology, and labour economics by implementing a life course approach, creating a more comprehensive, nuanced, and interdisciplinary understanding about the implications of student employment for students lives.

To do so, it uses multichannel sequence analysis, and mixture hidden Markov modelling to jointly analyse educational and labour market trajectories based on high-quality longitudinal data from four carefully selected European countries belonging to three different welfare states: Liberal (UK), Conservative (the Netherlands, Germany), and Social Democrat (Finland).

It emphasises gender and social origin differences in patterns and implications of student employment, as well as differences across students fields of study, and national contexts.

The project includes an ambitious dissemination and communication plan targeting academic scholars, policy makers, managers of European Higher Education, and Higher Education Students.

As such, the GROW project aims at strengthening the Social Dimension of the European Higher Education Area and contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 4 (quality education) and 10 (reduce inequality).