Keenan Hartert ’13 featured in Star Tribune for research on how much college students work
Hartert majored in biology at Carleton.
Keenan Hartert ’13, a professor at Minnesota State University–Mankato, was featured by The Minnesota Star Tribune in a piece titled, “How much should college students work? A Mankato professor looks at link between too much work and failing grades.”
Keenan Hartert has heard people say college students just need to get a job to work their way through college.
He’s found it’s not that simple.
The Minnesota State University Mankato professor noticed that some students who seemed engaged in class bombed tests, in part because of trying to balance full course loads with working more than 20 hours a week — whether on overnight hospital shifts or managing a Kwik Trip.
“I was floored at how normal they thought … working 30 hours or more was,” he said.
Hartert began researching his students’ schedules, making connections between their hours worked and class performance.
He found that students who work more than 20 hours a week do significantly worse on tests and come to class less often; half of those low-attending students ended up failing his class, compared with just 7% of high-attending students.