I was involved in a discussion about whether kids should work p/t jobs in college. A friend stated that kids will only do X amount of studying. Free time is spent partying. A p/t job reduces the partying, and is probably better for them not getting into trouble.
I tend to agree with this idea.
I have lots of coworkers who state they don't want their kids to work because they want them to focus on school. I always ask their kids GPAs and whether they're on track to graduate in 4 years.
My son did work during school last fall and he did OK with grades. That said, he didn't work this spring (at my suggestion) and he did better with grades.
The problem I have with your friend's analysis is that it seems to allow room for studying, partying and work and seems to assume that kids will do only 2 of those and that studying is always one of the 2.
I have problems with both those assumptions. First - DS is not a big partier. He does have friends and he does socialize. But, he also spends a lot of time sort of doing nothing special. He'll play video games, or watch a stream of a game, or even read a book. Maybe this is because of his ADHD, but he seems to need that time to just sort of do nothing. It isn't partying, though. And, he seems to do better if he has the time to both do that and the time to study.
When he was working, the job didn't cut into the doing nothing productive time that I'm talking about. Instead the job cut into his studying time.
Sure, he met his deadlines for his work which is why he had OK grades last fall (and to be fair an A in his major). But, he didn't really do anything extra. Between work and doing what he had to do to meet his deadlines at school he didn't have a lot of time left over and he spent most of that doing the kind of things I described above.
This last semester he didn't work. It is my observation that he
did spend more time on studying this semester. For one thing he had more time to meet with various study groups with other students. Last semester he often couldn't do that because of conflict with his work schedule. This semester he could. Last semester, he was having a problem in one course and the only time the college's tutoring center was available for that course was while he was working. This semester, whenever he ran into a problem, he could easily go to get help whenever it was available.
Now he still did plenty of playing videogames, listening to music, watching game streams, etc. And, probably more than he did last semester. But, there is no question that he studied more this semester and had better overall grades.
BTW, I do think that many kids
can work and go to school at the same time. It just depends on the student. Theoretically I always thought the kids should work and go to school for much the reason you state. It is just that this is one of those things where my actual experience with my own kids showed me it was better not to work.