The purpose of this paper is to mark out and describe different types of combination between university studies with work that university students in Yaroslavl region in Russia employ, and to analyze the influence of student employment on academic achievement.

In relevant literature we have found two main frameworks for assessing the consequences of an increasing number of working university students in Russia as well as in Europe. The first one refers to academic achievement and drop-out rates among working students compared to those who don’t work (Rochford, Connolly, Drennan, 2009; Derous, Ryan, 2008).Such works are usually based on the assumption that the time spent on work is taken away from studying. Therefore working while studying negatively influences academic achievement and increases a possibility of drop-out. But research evidence on this topic usually shows that the connection between student employment and academic achievement isn’t that straight forward but it is rather mediated by such factors as job content and a number of hours spent at the workplace (Beerkens, Mägi, Lill, 2011; McKechnie, Hobbs, Simpson, Anderson, Howieson, Semple, 2010).

The second framework focuses on the influence of student employment on his/her further integration into labour market (Robert, Saar, 2012; Pemberton, Jewell, Faggian, King, 2012). Due to the longitudinal design of our study we have an opportunity to unite both mentioned frameworks in the analysis of types of combining university studies with work as elements of educational and career trajectories of students and graduates: to study connection of student employment and academic achievement as well as its influence on further university-to-work transition. We view trajectories in the domains of education and career as aspects of life trajectories rather than as separate paths because it seems difficult to draw a line between them especially in the context of lifelong learning conception (Cooksey, Rindfuss, 2001).

The objective of our research on this phase of the study (the first wave of the longitudinal research) refers to one of the most pertinent topics of the institutional discourse: influence of student employment on academic achievement. Therefore the main purpose of this paper is to analyze influence of different types of combining work with studies on academic achievement among university students of Yaroslavl region in Russia. We are going to answer the following questions:

• What types of combining studies with work can be defined?
• How different types of combining studies with work influence academic achievement?
• Do students who work during studies profit in terms of academic achievement compared to those who do not work?

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