Spending time on work during a full-time study might compete with class attendance or self-study and slow study progress. At the same time, a domain-relevant job may grant beneficial effects that enhance academic outcomes. Prior research showed contradictory findings, possibly because of a lack of distinction between types of work and the different years of college. The current study analyzed the effect of different types of work on the study progress of 132 Dutch pre-service teachers with repeated measures at 25 points in time over a 4-year timespan using growth models. Students who spent more time on a paid job as a teacher obtained significantly more study credits. The optimal number of hours spent on paid work outside of education changes during college. These findings support the importance of study-job-congruence and add the roles of timing (year of college) and remuneration (getting paid) as relevant variables to role-based resource theory.