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Abstract
Student employment has been treated as a homogeneous category in studying the effects of doing part‐time jobs on student academic performance or social life. In the present study, using data collected from a well‐known public university in Macau, we treat student employment as a heterogeneous experience and compare the relative importance of various characteristics of student employment in predicting student academic performance and social life. We find that doing part‐time jobs exerts no effect on student academic performance when it is treated as a homogeneous category. When treated as a heterogeneous experience, we find that incentives to work have most effects on student academic performance, followed by whether the jobs provide opportunities for students to develop skills and whether the jobs are related to their fields of study. Inconsistent with most previous studies, we find that doing part‐time jobs actually enriches students' school life and increases their social support network as well. We do find that taking part‐time jobs damages students' relationships with their parents.