Characteristics of Student Employment in Croatia

Abstract

The article deals with student term-time employment in Croatia, causes of its growing prevalence, its patterns and legal regulation, and finally its effects on the higher education system and labour market. Overview of the theories on combining work and study singled out few relevant factors determining motivations of students for engaging in term-time employment and employment's different academic and professional outcomes, mainly related to the massification of higher education phenomenon (higher number of students and their greater diversity, youth unemployment, and questionable college degree relevance). Although conducted on non-systematic data, gathered from previous research of student population in Croatia and EUROSTUDENT international research on the quality of student life, analysis carried out in this article showed the occurrence of higher education massification and its influence on student employment, especially in the fields of social sciences and humanities. Croatian students' motivations for term-time employment are mainly a wish to improve their living standard and a need for work experience, while their average workload is of low to medium intensity, usually on jobs not at all related to their future profession. Apart from presenting the practice of student work use, this article also gives an overview of its legal regulation in Croatia, and examples of its misuse, i.e., negative implications it may have on student and regular workers.