MARCH 2006 :: CONSUMER ED

Benefits of a Part-Time Job
There Aren't Many, Says One Researcher. And There Are Lots of Drawbacks.

By June Kronholz
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Should you take a part-time job?

Help-wanted signs are sprouting at the mall. A job means college savings, new skills and an attention-getting line on a resume, right?

"Mythical bunk," says Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University psychology professor who studies teens in the workforce. Above 10 hours a week, the more hours teenagers work, "the worse it is" for them, he warns. For life lessons and college admissions, he adds, teenagers are better off "playing on the field hockey team than slinging tacos at a fast-food restaurant."

Dr. Steinberg's isn't the only research that should give teens pause. Research shows that school absences rise and scores on standardized tests fall as a teen's work hours increase. Working students take fewer classes, get fewer school honors, hold fewer leadership positions in school and are less involved in extracurricular activities.

Working doesn't seem to have much impact on how much time teenagers spend on homework, but that could be because there's not much to cut: U.S. kids spend fewer than four hours a week on out-of-school studying, studies show.

Easier Courses

There's also not a lot of evidence that working affects grades. Instead, working teens appear to take easier courses in order to protect their grades. The U.S. Department of Education reports that about 28% of 16- to 19-year-olds hold part-time jobs. Meanwhile-and perhaps as a result-only one in 11 high school graduates has taken trigonometry and one in four has taken physics, the agency says.

Even those who aren't working may be harmed when their classmates take jobs. Teachers who have lots of working students plan easier lessons and let students do homework during class time, Dr. Steinberg says. "It's a lowering of expectations," he says.

The potential problems go beyond the classroom. Dr. Steinberg's research shows that teens who work at least 20 hours a week are 30% more likely to use drugs and alcohol than are those who don't work. "The main culprit is extra income," he says, but the association with older workers and the stress of the repetitive jobs that many teens hold also add to the abuse.

It's also not likely that holding a part-time job will teach teenagers new job skills or life skills that will come in handy when they enter the workforce full time. That's because most jobs that teenagers take don't come with any training or even much meaningful contact with adult supervisors.

Sure, some teens learn time-management skills by balancing work and school. But if teens haven't learned time management by 11th or 12th grade, "they aren't likely to learn it at McDonald's," Dr. Steinberg says.

Instead of learning good lessons, he adds, teens tend to learn bad ones from the low-skill jobs most of them take. Because most teenagers work in less-than-ideal conditions-24% of them work in restaurants, says the Education Department-they develop negative attitudes toward work. They start thinking, for example, that it's OK to pilfer items as a way to offset their low pay, Dr. Steinberg says.

"In small doses, work isn't harmful. But in small doses, there are better things to do with your time," he adds. The Education Department says, for example, that the high school seniors who are the most likely to be involved in their school's sports teams, academic clubs, music ensembles and publications are those who score in the top quarter of their classes academically.

It's probably more likely that bright kids join the orchestra than that the orchestra produces bright kids. Still, colleges take an enormous interest in after-school activities, and working can leave little time for things like oboe and the school newspaper.

Brown University in Providence, R.I., is so convinced of the distraction of part-time jobs that it has dropped its work-study program for freshmen. Starting this year, it will give grants to scholarship students who previously worked in clerical or kitchen jobs to help pay their tuition. "Those are hours you can't spend studying or being with classmates or taking advantage of things outside the classroom," spokesman Mark Nickel says the college decided.

Saving Nothing

Finally, it's not as if high schoolers are taking jobs in order to pay for their college education-a motive that might offset the downsides of working. The Education Department reports that 68% of young people who plan to go to college said they save "none or only a little" of their paychecks. Almost half said they spent most or all of their earnings on "personal items."

Does that mean you should abandon thoughts of a part-time job? Not necessarily. At a smoothie shop in suburban Washington, D.C., one recent Saturday, Molly Cole and Jessie Rai, both 16-year-old high school sophomores, were whipping up fruit drinks and earning $7 an hour.

Their grades haven't suffered at highly competitive Churchill High School in Potomac, Md., since they began working 25 hours a week, the teens say. But they agree that the job takes time away from sleep, school activities and friends. "I've had to give up a lot of social things; I don't have a lot of free time," Ms. Cole laments.

The job hasn't taught them any transferable skills, and neither young woman is saving her earnings for college. But Molly's father, Andy Cole, a commercial real-estate agent, says the job is "a positive," providing his daughter with self-esteem, a new sense of responsibility and her first-ever bank account.

Do you have a part-time job? What is your opinionof Dr. Steinberg's conclusions?Write to letters.classroom@wsj.com.