Higher education faces daunting challenges: soaring costs, access and completion issues, rapidly changing technology, and accountability pressures from state and federal officials. But no challenge is more daunting than the fundamental question that many Americans are now asking: “Is college worth it?”
Today, some people in higher education answer this question by tracking outcome measures such as degree attainment and gainful employment. Others provide data about graduates’ average starting salaries or alumni satisfaction rates. Still others cite the fact that people with bachelor’s degrees earn $1 million more over their lifetimes than those with only a high-school diploma. Boards may rely on these data to make important decisions about the institutions they govern, but all of these metrics fall short of explaining why college is worth it.
As a result of the recent economic downturn, many graduates are not finding well-paying jobs. Meanwhile, over the past two decades, average tuition at American colleges and universities has jumped a staggering 248 percent. As a percentage of household income, tuition has risen from 23 percent in 2001 to 38 percent today.
How have Americans afforded this? The simple answer is that they haven’t. Student loan debt in the U.S. recently surpassed $1 trillion—more than all credit-card debt combined. Americans are spending money they don’t have to finance educations they’re not sure are worth it, which raises the fundamental question: What should be the ultimate outcome of a college education? If board members are not already asking themselves this question, they must start.
When I first joined Gallup about a year ago, I spent six months informally asking college presidents and trustees that very question. After dozens of interviews, a pattern emerged. Although the words and perspectives differed, the answers were consistent: “To improve one’s lot in life” or “To prepare people for long-term success in life.” Those are solid, inspiring answers. So I asked the next obvious question: “How are you measuring this?” The unanimous answer was: “We aren’t.”
There is an expression, “We value what we measure.” While it seems clear that we in higher education are not measuring what we value right now, there is an alternative—one that would lead to better educational and career outcomes for students, and thus answer in the affirmative the question of whether college is worth the time, money, and effort.
Most people would agree that helping someone attain a better, fuller life is much more important than good grades and a degree. These same people often stress, as well, that college prepares a person for not just the first job out of college, but many different jobs over their lifetimes. But how do you measure these longer-term outcomes? Gallup has conducted research that can point higher education in the right direction.
For more than 70 years, Gallup has asked people about what is most important in their lives and what makes them successful and healthy. Every night, Gallup surveys a representative sample of Americans as well as people worldwide, asking them to rate their lives and whether they are happy with them. In this way, we have been able to discover what the most satisfied and successful people do and, subsequently, why they rate their lives highly. In other words, we are studying the wellbeing of people around the world. And our research reinforces the fact that the ultimate outcome of an education is fundamentally about wellbeing. People often view wellbeing as happiness or wealth, but it is much more than that, and it is closely tied to education.
From its data, Gallup found five essential elements of wellbeing: career, social, financial, physical, and community. Career wellbeing measures whether you enjoy what you do each day and how you occupy your time. Social wellbeing is having strong relationships and love in your life. Financial wellbeing is effectively managing your economic life. Physical wellbeing is having good health and enough energy to get things done daily. Community wellbeing is the sense of engagement you have with the area where you live. These wellbeing elements represent the broad categories that are essential for most people to live a life that matters.
Of those five elements, Gallup finds that career wellbeing is the most important predictor of wellbeing across the board. Though not a guarantee, it is likely that someone with high career wellbeing also has high social, financial, physical, and community wellbeing. Indeed, across every country that Gallup surveyed, people said that a good job trumps everything, including health and happiness. People certainly still value these things, but they usually view them as most achievable through a good job.
But what is a “good” job? In our research, we found that, for people around the world, career wellbeing is not just about a higher salary. It is not about the company you work for, the money you make, and the benefits you receive. It is about liking what you do, doing what you are best at every day, and having a good manager. Using a workplace-engagement study, Gallup surveyed 22 million employees in all types of organizations worldwide and can now define what a good job looks like and measure whether someone has one. Someone who strongly agrees (answers 5 on a 5-point scale) with the following statements usually has a good job: “I like what I do each day”; “At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day”; “My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person”; and “There is someone at work who encourages my development.” He or she may also strongly agree with statements such as: “I learn or do something interesting every day” and “In the last 12 months, I have reached most of my goals.” Taken together, such statements describe a person who is highly engaged at work and who has high career wellbeing.
Gallup’s wellbeing research suggests a way to better measure meaningful outcomes in higher education. It is a measure that every college and university can use with alumni to provide a clear value proposition—or not—about the lifelong effect of a particular college degree on graduates, and it is a measure that board members should support. Success as defined by wellbeing is less about a student getting the highest-paying job and more about figuring out what he or she likes to do and what he or she does best. Incorporating experiential and project-based learning, internships, mentorships, and the like into a degree program can aid in this process. The emphasis then becomes less about listing dozens of involvements on a resume and more about making a lasting contribution to one or two. It is less about getting students recruited by a brand-name firm and more about teaching students how to identify a good manager and an engaging workplace.
In short, it is possible to reliably and consistently measure things such as whether graduates are engaged in their jobs, doing what they are best at, contributing to their communities, and generally achieving a high quality of life. Higher education has been aiming at these outcomes for a long time without ever fully knowing the result. It’s time we understand how we are doing and then ensure we are retooling our curriculum and student experiences to improve the results. And as opposed to only seeing how certain alumni compare to other colleges and universities, we can now compare these results to the overall American and even world population—a real measuring stick, to be sure. This doesn’t need to be—nor should it be—a new ranking system. What matters for an institution is knowing how it is doing on these measures and working to improve them every year, regardless of how strong or weak the starting position. Any number of higher education constituencies will demand to know that institutions care about and measure these outcomes.
Achieving higher wellbeing in various areas, especially one’s career, becomes the ultimate signifier of success—a measurable and definitive standard. Leaders in higher education should set their sights on helping their students and graduates achieve not only well-paying jobs, but also wellbeing. In doing so, they will most certainly improve many of the intermediate outcomes along the way.
Shortsighted and insufficient measures currently shape the higher education agenda. If board members introduce better outcomes to aim for—such as career wellbeing—others will find ways to achieve them. But until we value what we measure, and measure what we value, Americans will continue to ask the question, “Is college worth it?” And we in higher education might not like the answer.
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