Too Much of Everything Is Bad: The Case of Czech University Students’ Work-Study Balance During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Students are an exceptionally vulnerable population in comparison to any other age group. Many students face considerable stress stemming from the combined demands of their studies and, for some, the necessity to work. This situation presents a serious dilemma of how to combine work and study how to maintain mental well-being. We explored the work-study balance by analyzing a repeated cross-sectional sample of 8,584 Czech university students at two time points (2020 and 2021) during the pandemic outbreak. Employment benefits students’ mental health, but students who worked extra hours had more depressive symptoms than those who worked part-time or full-time. In addition, an increasing study load had a negative effect on students in the form of increased depressive symptoms. Both students who were employed before the pandemic but were no longer working during it and students who never had a job had significantly higher depressive symptoms than working students. The expectation of a detrimental high workload-high study load effect was not confirmed.