We all know anecdotally that student employment makes a difference in our students’ development and their access to careers and lives of purpose, but we can now show exactly what that difference is at DU!

Student Employees and Supervisor of the Year
Hot Ones Employer Panel
National Student Employment Week Story Mosaic

Key highlights include:

AY25 Programming:

In AY25, we had 3,656 student employees and 710 supervisors at DU. Our top employers included Student Affairs & Inclusive Excellence (566 student employees), College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (482 student employees), and Daniels College of Business (395 student employees).
A record 31 students completed one or more of our Student Employees Achieve badges and had the opportunity to practice interviewing with employer partners from banking, education, and government. This model is also a leader in the student employment field and we presented on it for state and national bodies.
Our Supervisor Learning Cohort received an NPS of 92.86, compared to a score of 86 the previous winter. (NPS of +72 is considered the top quartile of organizations/programs.) Our office has been sought out by other schools across the country for this model and we were invited to present nationally.

Outcomes Reporting:

Across most categories, student employees had higher end of term retention rates than their non-student employee peers by 2023, the most recent fall cohort for which data is available. For most demographic categories, they had higher rates beginning in 2021, the first full year of our office. Students in work-study funded positions saw particular growth in retention.

Graduation rates for student employees were higher than graduation rates for other students across the years of the pilot program.

First-generation students with student employment had graduation rates very close to those of their non-first-generation peers. Meanwhile, first generation students who were not student employees saw graduation rates well below their non-student employee peers for most years tracked.

Across the years of the pilot program, undergraduate student employees reported higher rates of successful career outcomes than their non-student employee counterparts. The class of 2023 experienced a drop in career outcomes, but student employee outcomes for the class of 2024 began to rebound while non-student employee outcomes continued to fall.