New dimensions of educational inequality: Changing patterns of combining college and work in the U.S. over time

Expansion of an educational system is often accompanied by differentiation. In the U.S., expansion of higher education included an increasing reliance on work. For a growing proportion of students, including those of traditional college-going age, going to college also involved going to work. This raises a crucial question of whether this form of differentiation has altered the patterns of inequality in higher education. While growing proportions of disadvantaged students are entering higher education, are they increasingly depending on work during their studies? We address this question using data from two waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97). We begin by presenting longitudinal profiles of engagement in school and work for young adults in the 1980s and 2000s. Following, we conduct multivariate analyses predicting the number of hours students are working while enrolled in college in two time periods. Presented analyses reveal a substantial amount of stability in social class inequality over time, with a modest increase in inequality among students attending four-year institutions full-time. Implications of these findings for policy and research on social stratification are discussed.