When daytime classes meet nighttime jobs: The double-edged impact of work-school conflict on music students

BackgroundMusic students often combine demanding academic training with part-time work, creating work-school conflict that may hinder motivation, engagement and well-being. However, little is known about how such conflict functions in performance-based programs where practice intensity and collaboration are essential.ObjectiveThis study examines how work-school conflict affects academic engagement and school burnout among music students, focusing on the mediating roles of need satisfaction and need frustration and the moderating roles of intrinsic and extrinsic career goals.MethodsA two-wave survey design was employed to reduce common method bias. In the first wave, 316 music students from universities in Beijing completed measures of work-school conflict, student engagement and school burnout. One month later, 297 matched respondents completed measures of need satisfaction and need frustration. Established instruments and a translation-back-translation procedure ensured measurement reliability and validity. Hierarchical regression analyses and bootstrapping were used to test the mediating and moderating effects.ResultsWork-school conflict reduced need satisfaction and increased need frustration. Need satisfaction partially mediated the link between conflict and engagement, whereas need frustration fully mediated the link between conflict and burnout. Intrinsic career goals intensified the negative association between conflict and need satisfaction, while extrinsic goals showed no moderating effect.ConclusionsWork-school conflict is related to music students' academic adjustment through dual motivational pathways. Conflict is negatively associated with autonomy, competence and relatedness and elicits pressure that frustrates basic needs. Intrinsic career goals influence how students interpret conflict, underscoring the need for supportive educational environments that help balance employment with musical and academic development.