Only half of college alumni think their university education was worth the cost, but a lot fewer think it’s worthwhile when taking on a lot of student loan debt, according to a new survey.
The national Gallup-Purdue Index found that in the face of mounting debt, 50 percent of alumni “strongly agree” that their college education was worth the cost. Graduates of public universities agreed with that the most at 52 percent, followed by 47 percent at private nonprofit universities. Only 26 percent of graduates of private for-profit universities agreed, possibly because they were more likely to take on higher levels of student loan debt.
The survey found that 63 percent of alumni who graduated from 2006-15 used student loans, with the median loan at $30,000.
“Given that higher education has become one of the largest financial investments a person will make over their lifetime, it’s a bit alarming that only half of all graduates strongly agree their education was worth the cost,” said Brandon Busteed, Gallup’s executive director for education and workforce development, in a statement. “Clearly, we all need to work harder on improving quality and reducing cost as much as possible.”
Postponing other things after college
Nearly half of recent graduates who incurred any amount of student loan debt reported postponing further training or postgraduate education because of those loans. A third or more have delayed purchasing a house or a car because of debt, and nearly one in five have put off starting their own business. Each of these figures rises significantly among those with a debt burden of $25,001 or higher.
Recent graduates with a debt burden of $25,001 or more are almost twice as likely to strongly agree that their education was worth the cost if they recall supportive relationships with professors and mentors. And recent graduates with high debt are also less likely to put off continuing their education or starting a business because of student loans if they strongly agree they had supportive relationships in college.
“We’ve said before that it’s not where you go to college but how you go to college that matters,” Purdue President Mitch Daniels said in a statement. “Students get out what they put in, and they can get an excellent education at a wide variety of institutions across the country. As the study shows, their experience is determined much more by the relationships they build with mentors and the success they are able to achieve via their work on campus or abroad.”
Relationships improve value
Recent graduates who strongly agree with any of three items measuring supportive relationships with professors or mentors were almost twice as likely to strongly agree that their education was worth the cost. These relationships hold even when controlling for personality characteristics and other variables, such as student loan debt and employment status, that could also be related to graduates’ perceptions that college was worth it.
If recent graduates strongly agree that they had any of three experiential learning opportunities — an internship related to their studies, active involvement in extracurricular activities or a project that took a semester or more to complete — their likelihood to strongly agree that their education was worth the cost increases 1.5 times.
The current GPI results reaffirm the importance to undergraduates of supportive relationships with professors and mentors. If employed graduates strongly agreed that they had professors who cared about them, they had at least one professor who made them excited about learning and they had a mentor who encouraged them to pursue their goals and dreams, their odds of being emotionally engaged at work nearly double.
The results from the initial GPI national survey were released in May 2014. Besides the findings about student engagement with faculty mentors, the index also reported there is no difference in workplace engagement or a college graduate’s well-being if they attended a public or private not-for-profit institution, a highly selective institution, or a top 100-ranked school in U.S. News & World Report. It also outlined the relationship between the level of student debt and a graduate’s well-being and entrepreneurial experience.
