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STUDENT PART-TIME EMPLOYMENT: CASE STUDY AT TON DUC THANG

UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM

Conference Paper · November 2016

DOI: 10.21125/iceri.2016.1725

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 STUDENT PART-TIME EMPLOYMENT: CASE STUDY AT TON DUC
THANG UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM
C. Ngoc Ha1, N. Trang Thao1,2, T. Dinh Son1
1
Faculty of Mathematics and Statistics, Ton Duc Thang University (VIETNAM)
2
Division of Computational Mathematics and Engineering, Institute for Computational
Science, Ton Duc Thang University (VIETNAM)

Abstract
This paper presents the survey results of part-time employment of students at Ton Duc Thang
University. In this research, demand and status of part-time employment as well as effect of part-time
employment on students’ learning results will be clarified. The results in this research were released
with the support of statistical tools such as independent samples T-Test, Paired-samples T-Test, Chi-
squared test, analysis of variance ANOVA. In particular, this paper finds that the demand of part-time
employment of students depends on age, course and major; the reasons of taking part-time
employment is to increase income; the majority of students choose simple jobs which do not require
specialized skills, hence, it cannot improve student learning performance and even has negative
effects on students who do jobs of deliverer and leaflets. The finding of the paper, in addition to
helping leaders in Ton Duc Thang University that build models of support and management of student
part-time employment effectively, is also an extreme useful source of reference for social science
researchers in the world about case study in Vietnam where none of research involved in student part-
time employment is published internationally.
Keywords: students; part-time employment; learning results; Vietnam.

1 INTRODUCTION
Currently, student part-time employment becomes a popular phenomenon in universities and colleges,
especially those in big cities. However, student part-time employment is often in spontaneous nature
and closely unorganized which has a big influence on each student especially in terms of learning
performance. Therefore, the student part-time employment has been researched by many scientists.
Previous studies usually focused on three main issues: (1) demand and reason of student part-time
employment; (2) status of student part-time employment; (3) effects of part-time employment on
students, especially on learning results.
For issue (1), the studies showed that the percentage of full-time students working part-time
accounted for 50% through 80% ([1]–[8]) and the number of students taking part-time employment
tends to increase in line with the development of the world today ([7], [9]–[13]). Causes of the increase
in the number of students who work part time are the effect of the economy, as price and cost of living
is increasing. Students have to take part-time employment to pay for their daily living expenses such
as house rent, food, buying books, fees for classes outside the formal training program to enhance
their skills, workmanship and esspecially students take part-time employment to pay for their loans
from the state ([8], [12], [14]–[20]). In addition to the above-mentioned reasons, some other causes
are found, for example [9], [17], [21]–[24] indicated that students work part-time to develop social
relationships which increases the ability to find good jobs later. Lucas and Lammont [25] said that
student took part-time employment to practice their skills as teamwork skills and practical skills
meanwhile [6], [26] found that students taking part-time jobs in order to increase their professional
experience. Thus, in the first issue, it can be seen from previous studies that part-time employment is
becoming necessary demand of students. Main reasons leading to student part-time employment
include earning incomes to pay for living expenses, developing social relationships, increasing
chances of finding good jobs later, increasing job experience and improving their soft skills (skills of
teamwork and practice ...).
For issue (2), the studies mainly focus on the nature of student part-time employment, high or low skill,
whether relating to their major or not, the number of jobs that each student currently doing as part time
job and the number of hours that students must spend on working part-time each week. Studies
showed that students mostly do jobs which do not require high skills such as salespeople, waiters and
waitresses in restaurants, coffee shops ([8]–[10], [12], [27], [28]) and about 12% of them do two or

Proceedings of ICERI2016 Conference ISBN: 978-84-617-5895-1

14th-16th November 2016, Seville, Spain 3193
more jobs at the same time ([8]). Regarding time of part-time employment, [5], [7], [8], [27]–[30]
showed that the average time that each student spends working every week is 12 through 16 hours,
even up to 30 hours/week ([31], [32]), for some special cases, the number of hours of student part-
time employment is more than the number of hours that students attend the classes ([8]).
The issue (3) is consequence of the issue (2), when part-time jobs and time of part-time employment
may have effects on student’s health as well as learning performance. So far, there have been many
surveys on the effect of part-time employment on student learning performance with very different
results. The majority of the researchers said students’ part-time employment negatively affect on their
learning performance such as less time for learning ([5], [6], [8], [33]), decrease in learning results ([7],
[8], [15], [27], [30], [34], [35]), students with pressure from both learning and working can have severe
stress ([8], [12], [17], [18], [30], [36], [37]), part-time employment even gives students negative trends,
contradictory to what students have learned in their school ([9]). In the other hand, other studies said
that part-time employment does not affect the learning outcomes of students ([14], [38]) or does not
effect if students know how to manage time effectively, for example, ([30], [39]) showed that if students
work no more than 20 hours per week, part-time employment completely has no effect on their
learning outcomes.
The student part-time employment has been widely researched by many scientists in the world but
Vietnam where none of research involved in student part- time employment is published
internationally. Even though some national researches on student part-time employment were
released, they just stopped at the survey and descriptive statistics, lacked of reliable conclusions
based on statistical tools such as testing and analysis of variance. Futhermore, construction of
questionnaires of these studies was mainly based on subjective experience, lack of literature review in
a systematic manner, thereby leading to the fact that the questionnaires do not cover all issues that
have been globally studied.
To overcome limitations of local situation researches mentioned above and supply the result of a case
study about student part-time employment in Vietnam, the author made this paper to clarify demand,
status of part-time employment of students at Ton Duc Thang University (TDTU) and effect of part-
time employment on students’ learning performance. In this study, the questionnaire was based on a
rich and highly reliable source of references. The results presented reflect fully three issues:
• Analyzing demand of part-time employment, factors affecting the demand of part-time
employment and main causes leading to part-time employment of TDTU students.
• Analyzing status of student part-time employment: popular part-time jobs and time that students
have to work each week.
• Analyzing effects of part-time employment on the learning performance of students. Specifically,
the study will examine the dependence between the student’s learning results and type of job,
number of job and time that students have to work.
The results were released with the support of statistical tools such as independent samples T-Test,
Paired-samples T-Test, chi-squared test, analysis of variance ANOVA. The finding of the paper,
besides the scientific sense, is also a useful source of reference for TDTU, departments of student
affairs, and organizations involved in the construction of models of support and management of
student part-time employment in order to maximize benefits of part-time employment as well as
minimize its negative effects on students.
The remainder of this article is organized as follows. Section 2 describes methods of building
questionnaire and its main contents, methods for collecting, processing and analyzing the data. The
main results obtained are presented in Section 3. Section 4 presents comments, suggestions,
recommendations and conclusions.

2 OVERVIEW

2.1 Design of Questionnaire

The questionnaire was based on a combination of literature review and specificities of students at
TDTU. The questionnaire consists of four sections:
• Personal information of students includes: age, gender, ethnic group, place of birth, academic
year and major.

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 • The survey of student’s demand of part-time employment comprises questions: whether
students have a part time employment or not, reasons of part-time employment (if they take
part-time employment).
• Status of student part-time employment consists of questions about part- time jobs and the
number of hours/week.
• The effects of part-time employment include questions about the student’s comments on the
effect of part-time employment. The survey of effects of part-time employment on learning
results is measured by 2 variables, student’s learning results before taking a part-time
employment, and student’s learning results of the current academic term (term 1 of 2015-2016
academic year).

2.2 Data Collection and Analysis

After the questionnaire had been built, the information of 550 students were collected by a convenient
sampling method. Then data were processed by SPSS software. Statistical tools used included
descriptive statistics, independent samples T-Test, Paired-samples T-Test, chi-squared test, analysis
of variance ANOVA. The analysis is performed at the sig. of 5%.

3 RESULTS OF ANALYSIS
The analysis results on three issues: demand and reason of student part-time employment, status of
student part-time employment, effects of part-time employment on student’s learning outcomes. The
detailed results are as follows.

3.1 Demands and Reasons of Students’ Part-time Employment

On demand of part-time employment, percentage of students with a part time job accounted for 32%
of the students surveyed. Compared with surveys by [6]–[8] or other local researches with percentage
of students taking a part-time employment accounting for 50-80%, this percentage is much lower.
Thus, for TDTU students the demand of part-time employment is not really high.
The authors also examined the dependence between students’ demand of part-time employment
under factors as age, gender, ethnic group, native village, majors, and enrollment course. Tab. 1
summarizes results of chi-squared test and conclusions about the dependence of demand of part-time
employment on the factors.

Tab. 1 Results of Chi-square test.

Hypothesis p-value Conclusion

The demand of part-time employment does not 0.002 Reject the null hypothesis.
depend on age group.
The demand of part-time employment does not 0.297 Cannot reject the null hypothesis.
depend on gender.
The demand of part-time employment does not 0.535 Cannot reject the null hypothesis.
depend on ethnic.
The demand of part-time employment does not 0.640 Cannot reject the null hypothesis.
depend on student’s hometown.
The demand of part-time employment does not 0.036 Reject the null hypothesis.
depend on student’s sector.
The demand of part-time employment does not 0.004 Reject the null hypothesis.
depend on student’s course.

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The results in Tab. 1 show that with significance level of 5%, it can be concluded that the demand of
part-time employment of TDTU Students depends on age, course and major. Specifically:
• Students’ demand of part-time employment increases with age: from 22.7% for students under
age of 20 up to 35.82% for students aged 20-22 and up to 50% for students aged 23 and older.
This result is reasonable since students with higher age have higher sense of independence
and higher demand of self-made money.
• For the study course, the percentage of student part-time employment is low for first year
students, gradually increases in second year and third year students and strongly increases for
students after the fourth year. This result also reflects the reality when first year students are still
new to surroundings and new learning environment so the number of students who take a part-
time job is not much. Students of older courses are getting used to the learning environment,
especially students of after the fourth year due to studying two majors, or resume some subjects
with fewer weekly sessions, they have more free time so the percentage of part-time
employment also increases. This result is consistent with the conclusions of the dependence of
the part-time employment demand on the age as mentioned above, but for the study course, the
percentage of students taking part-time employment drops suddenly for fourth-year students,
which is quite natural when they are busy learning graduation subjects, preparing graduation
thesis so the percentage of fourth-year students taking part-time employment decreases. This is
a trend showing students’ appropriate awareness to adjust and balance part-time employment
to fit their learning duty.
• For major, students in social and economic sectors have more demand to take part-time
employment than students in the natural and technical sciences. This is also true as students of
social sector often have a better communication skill as well as are more dynamic. Besides
learning in classes, the collision with the external social life is also a good lesson for students of
social sector to improve themselves.
For reasons of taking part-time employment: with 70% of students selected “taking part-time
employment is to increase income”, the second most selected choice is “taking advantage of freetime”
with 50% of students agreed (see Fig. 1 and Tab. 2). Thus, the results found also coincides with the
results by [8], [12], [14]–[20]. It can be seen that this is a very basic and understandable reason.
Earning extra income to support their families, pay for expenses is always the first and fundamental
demand for each student. However, it can be also seen that necessary factors such as professional
training and soft-skills training in order to increase the likelihood of finding a good job after graduation
are not properly paid attention to, which proves that the awareness of TDTU students seems to be
transient with no orientation for the future. This is exactly what the university needs to have effective
activities and support measures. Only when there is a good combination of income and necessary
skills, does student part-time employment promote positive effects for the students.

Tab. 2 The reasons of taking part-time employment

The reasons of taking part-time Percentages of agreement

employment
To increase student income (1) 70%
To improve student social relationship (2) 40%
To improve soft-skill (3) 41%
For professional training (4) 23%
To increase the likelihood of finding a good job 26%
after graduation (5)
Taking advantage of freetime (6) 50%
Other reasons (7) 2%

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 Fig. 1 The percentages of student agree and disagree with reasons of taking part-time employment

3.2 Status of Student Part-time Employment

About the most popular jobs students often do, it can be seen from Tab. 3 that the majority of students
choose simple jobs which do not require specialized skills, 40% of students chose jobs related to
catering, reception in coffee shops, restaurants meanwhile 22% of students chosen jobs related to
sales, marketing and trading products, goods (jobs require sales). Obviously this result is consistent
with results drawn from the reason of student part-time employment. Students taking part-time
employment are mainly because of income, their jobs do not require a lot of expertise, which is difficult
for them to improve their required knowledge and skills to get a good job later after graduation.

Table 3. Some popular jobs that student do.

Part-time job Percentage of agreement

Tutor 19%
Event trades 11%
Sales, marketing and trading products, goods 22%
Catering, reception 40%
Deliverer, leafleter 5%
Worker 4%
Internship in TDT university 6%
Other jobs 10%

About number of jobs and hours of student part-time employment, 86.9% of students having a part
time job said that they just did a job, the average number of jobs was 1.18/student.the average
number of hours of part-time employment for a week was 21.85 hours/week. Tab. 4 and Fig. 2 show
that the majority of students spend 10 through 40 hours/week on part-time jobs. This is a reasonable
figure which means that the students have a good balance on part-time employment. However, Fig. 2
also shows that there are still cases in which student part-time employment accounted for over 60
hours/week.

Tab. 4 Descriptive statistic for the number of jobs and the number of hours done by students

Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation

Number of jobs 1 4 1.1761 .51012
Number of hours 2 70 21.85 12.703

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 Fig. 2 Histogram for working hours

3.3 Effect of Part-time Employment

In term of effect of part-time employment, 59% of surveyed students said that part-time employment
could affect their learning performance or their health. Students said that part-time employment made
them have less time for learning (see Tab. 5). For a more in-depth analysis of effects of part-time
employment on students’ learning results, the researchers specifically examined learning scores of
students who take a part-time employment at two times, before taking a part-time employment (BLS)
and current learning scores current, when taking a part-time employment (CLS), and conducted
testing the difference of two mean value in the case of paired samples. The results obtained for each
specific discipline are presented in Tab. 6.

Tab. 5 The effect of part-time employment according to student reporting

The effect Percentages of agree ment

Students have less time for learning 60%
Negative effect on health 39%
Stress 24%
Other effects 3.85%

Tab. 6 Test results and conclusion

Partime-job BLS-CLS p value Conclusion

Tutor 0.003 0.962 No effect
Event trades -0.053 0.245 No effect
Sales, marketing and trading products, goods -0.031 0.462 No effect
Catering, reception -0.170 0.165 No effect
Deliverer, leafleter 0.163 0.029 Negative effect
Worker -1.136 0.331 No effect
Intership in TDT university -0.717 0.452 No effect

Thus, after surveying learning results, part-time employment does not affect the academic
performance of the students except students who do jobs of “deliverer, leafleter”. Obviously, these
jobs require students to be outdoor, take their time and health but they not bring about skills and
knowledge. If students spend too much time on the jobs of this sector, they are easy to have a decline
in health as well as learning outcomes. From this conclusion, it is thought that the career consultancy
for students needs to be considered and promoted by the school.

3198
Finally, the researchers analyzed the dependence of learning results (difference between learning
scores before and when taking a part-time employment) on the number of part-time jobs and hours.
The results show that there are not sufficient grounds to conclude that the number of part-time jobs
and hours affect students’ learning results. (See Tab. 7 through 9).

Tab. 7 Descriptive statistic the (BLS-CLS) according to the number of jobs.

The number of job Mean Std. Deviation

1.00 -.2202 5.21715
2.00 .0213 0.30478

Tab. 8 Descriptive statistic the (BLS-CLS) according to the number of working hours.

Working hours Mean Std. Deviation

<=20 -.4516 6.82851
(20,40] .0841 0.99229
>40 .0267 0.21536

Tab. 9 Test results and conclusion

Hypothesis p-value Conclusion

The learning performance does not depend on 0.825 Cannot reject the null
the number of jobs. hypothesis.
The learning performance does not depend on 0.775 Cannot reject the null
the number of working hours. hypothesis.

4 CONCLUSION
With the questionnaire was based a systematic and reliable literature review in combination with the
actual characteristics of TDTU students, the paper analyzed the student part-time employment in three
aspects: demand and reason of part-time employment, status of part-time employment and effect of
part-time employment on students’ learning results. The results showed that: the demand of part-time
employment of TDTU students is not high, the number of students taking a part-time employment
depends on age, course of study and major. Students mainly take part-time employment because they
want to increase income and take advantage of free time. The popular part-time jobs are ones do not
require many specialized skills such as waiters and waitresses in the cafeteria, receptionists in
restaurants and hotels. Most students know how to balance the number of jobs and working hours.
Despite taking a part-time employment makes students have less time for their learning, it does not
have much effect on their learning results, except for outdoor jobs which affect their time and health
such as deliverers and leafleters. From these conclusions, the paper also proposes some solutions to
the school in order to minimize negative effects and promote positive effects of student part time
employment. Conclusions drawn from the paper will be an important source of information for the
university, department of student affairs, and union associations involved in orientation and decision-
making for employment support policies for students.

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