Working part-time or full-time while enrolled in college is not uncommon, but students who do so tend to fall behind their peers in terms of grades or spending more time in undergraduate study, even after controlling for other characteristics such as household resources.
Is Income Implicit in Measures of Student Ability?
Measures of student ability typically used for college admissions implicitly reflect differences in family income across students. However, high school GPA reflects differences in income noticeably less than SAT and ACT scores. However, SAT and ACT scores do capture aspects of student ability missed by school-specific rankings alone.
Household Finances and Post-Secondary Enrollment
Even after accounting for differences in observed student ability, students coming from lower-income households are less likely to attend college. If they attend college, lower-income students are also more likely to attend a two-year community college.
Student Ability and Post-Secondary Outcomes
Student performance in high school is a strong predictor of future success at college, including performance at two-year and four-year colleges, the likelihood of transferring from two-year colleges to four-year colleges, and eventually obtaining degrees.
Who Attends Community College?
About 30 percent of students who first attend two-year community college are from families with incomes above the median income for students attending four-year colleges. Moreover, upwards of one-fifth of top students from relatively small and large high schools first attend a two-year institution.