Understanding the Working College Student: New Research and Its Implications for Policy and Practice (review)

Reviewed by: Understanding the Working College Student: New Research and Its Implications for Policy and Practice Jillian Kinzie Understanding the Working College Student: New Research and Its Implications for Policy and Practice. Laura W. Perna (Editor). Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2010, 328 pages, 32. 50 (Softcover) Most students today, across all types of institutions, are employed while enrolled in college. The “working college student” has become the modus operandi for undergraduate life for traditional-age, dependent undergraduate students and independent and adult students alike, who work on average 24. 0 and 34. 5 hours per week, respectively. However, despite the prevalence of this characteristic in undergraduate education, little attention has been given to studying (a) how employment affects students’ educational experiences: specifically, the influence of employment on engagement experiences and learning outcomes of students who work; or (b) how the benefits and costs of working differ between traditional age-students and adults. The collective authors of Understanding the Working College Student address the topic by reviewing research and sharing insights that enrich our understanding of the realities of working students—both traditional-age and adult—including why students work and the consequences relative to student identity, learning, student engagement, and educational outcomes. The volume explores the difficulty of funding a college education and the challenges of trying to meet the multiple and sometimes conflicting demands of the roles of student, employee, and family, and the resulting high levels of stress and barriers to degree completion. Higher education scholars, policy makers, and campus administrators and student affairs educators are presented with a comprehensive review of a wealth of research regarding the experiences of students who work. Each chapter offers a sensible balance between solid research findings and implications for practice. This volume is organized into five distinct sections, with a range of edited chapters contributing to each topic. Given that this book is the first to fully address the working college student experience, it understandably has a lot of ground to cover. Perna’s introduction provides a helpful orientation to the topic, including a compelling warrant for the importance of understanding the working college student with a clear overview of the chapters that comprise the body of the text. An important opening chapter by Baum contextualizes student employment in the financial aid system and provides an overview of the reasons why students work while enrolled in college. Baum explains the complex and sometime idiosyncratic effects of financial aid work-study awards, in particular how college student earnings adversely affect financial aid and the especially detrimental effects this has on students who are working because they truly need the money to pay for their education. Section 2, on work as a component of student identity, begins with a comprehensive chapter by Kasworm regarding adult students who work. Working while in college has always been common among adult learners, and this chapter fully explores the current and future participation of adults in undergraduate education and proposes a model of adult identity to guide theory and inform more responsive policy. In chapter 3, Levin and End Page 631 colleagues examine the complex dimensions of the working student in the community college context and how students navigate their experience. In chapter 4 Ziskin and colleagues illuminate another dimension of the working student experience via a qualitative study of students enrolled at multiple institutions—socalled “mobile students”—and their struggles to balance work, family, and college. The adult student theme is taken up again by Rowan-Kenyon and colleagues in chapter 5 in an analysis of the relationship between work and academic progress and a description of the factors that limit and promote academic success of adult students who work. The relationship between work and cognitive development and learning is explored in several chapters in section 3. Lynch and colleagues lead off in chapter 6 by challenging traditional models of access to higher education and offering alternative models informed by the economics of education that emphasize the contribution of work to learning. In chapter 7 Pusser offers a thought-provoking critique of current conceptualizations of the working college student, deconstructs conceptions of student employment, and outlines the transformation of employment as a way to promote intellectual development. . .