Elite Colleges Don't
Buy Happiness for Graduates
A major new survey by Gallup finds that it
isn't where you go to college that is predictive of whether you are successful
at work and happy in life -- rather, it matters what you do while you're in
school that counts.
A word to high-school
seniors rejected by their first choice: A degree from that shiny, elite college
on the hill may not matter nearly as much as you think.
A new Gallup survey of
30,000 college graduates of all ages in all 50 states has found that highly
selective schools don't produce better workers or happier people, but inspiring
professors—no matter where they teach—just might.
The poll, undertaken
this spring, is part of a growing effort to measure how well colleges do their
jobs. This survey adds an interesting twist, because it looked not only at
graduates after college; it tried to determine what happens during college that
leads to well-being and workplace engagement later in life.
The poll didn't
measure graduates' earnings. Rather, it was rooted in 30 years of Gallup
research that shows that people who feel happy and engaged in their jobs are
the most productive. That relatively small group at the top didn't
disproportionately attend the prestigious schools that Americans have long
believed provided a golden ticket to success. Instead, they forged meaningful
connections with professors or mentors, and made significant investments in
long-term academic projects and extracurricular activities.
"It matters very
little where you go; it's how you do it" that counts, said Brandon
Busteed, executive director of Gallup Education. "Having a teacher who
believes in a student makes a lifetime of difference."
The poll is the
brainchild of former Indiana Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels,
who became president of Purdue University in January 2013. As he prepared for
the job, Mr. Daniels said he kept bumping into the same problem: a lack of
benchmarked data to measure the value of a college degree. Last spring, during
a trip to Gallup's D.C. offices, he seized on the idea of applying their
engagement and well-being questions, which had been used in other contexts, to
college graduates. The index will soon be broken down to the level of
individual schools "for those that have the will, and frankly, the
nerve," Mr. Daniels said.
"There is a lot
we don't know about higher education, and there is a sense it's skating on its
reputation," Mr. Daniels said. "We needed to know with more rigor how
well the experience is serving people."
The poll found that
just 39% of college graduates feel engaged at work—meaning, for instance, that
they enjoyed what they did on a daily basis and are emotionally and
intellectually connected to their jobs. And only 11% reported they were
"thriving" in five different aspects of their lives, among which are
financial stability, a strong social network and a sense of purpose.
That relatively small
handful of graduates—who tend to be more productive—went to a variety of
colleges, though they were slightly more likely to go to larger schools and
less likely to have attended for-profits.
The strongest
correlation for well-being emerged from a series of questions delving into
whether graduates felt "emotionally supported" at school by a
professor or mentor. Those who did were three times as likely to report they
thrived as adults. Graduates who reported having "experiential and deep
learning" were twice as likely to be engaged at work as those who didn't.
University of
Pennsylvania Professor Martin Seligman, who has studied the psychology of
happiness, said it was impossible to know whether the college experiences
Gallup asked about were the cause of later success or simply coincidental to
it.
"One hopeful
possibility is that if college were changed to produce more emotional support,
this would result in much more engagement later in life," he wrote in an
email. "Another, less interesting possibility" is that people engaged
at work who said they were emotionally supported in college are simply upbeat
to begin with, and that rosy outlook colors their memories.
Other, less fuzzy
correlations were between debt and entrepreneurship. About 26% of graduates
with no undergraduate debt started their own business, compared with just 20%
of those carrying debt from $20,000 to $40,000. Nearly three-quarters of U.S.
college graduates leave school with debt; among those who do, the average is
nearly $30,000. Graduates with that amount of debt were one-third as likely to
report they were "thriving" as graduates without debt reported.
The survey's most
dramatic takeaway—that graduation from an elite college provides no discernible
advantage over Podunk U—echoes a refrain that began getting traction about a
decade ago. Stacy Dale, an economist at Mathematica, a New Jersey research
firm, co-wrote a paper in 2004 that found that students who were accepted to
elite schools, but attended less selective schools, went on to earn just as
much money as their elite counterparts.
"Individual
traits matter more than where you went," Ms. Dale said. "It's a lot
more important what you learn later in life than where you got your
undergraduate degree."
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