University Degree Improves Standard of Living

University Degree Improves Standard of Living

If you were to suffer the misfortune of spending time in Canada's prison system, and while there were brave enough to start asking your cellmates for their CVs, you'd notice an interesting trend: almost none of the wards of the Correctional Service of Canada has a UNIVERSITY degree. In fact, at the time they began their incarceration, 82 per cent of federal inmates had an education of Grade 10 or less.

Admittedly, not going to university will not cause you to become a criminal. Nor will going to university prevent it. There's a difference between causation and correlation - something you can learn at university. But the chances of ending up in jail are considerably higher if someone has never been to university. And the chances of leading a life where crime is the subject of your late-night reading and TV watching, rather than your career, are considerably higher if you did go.

There is, in fact, a rather long list of bad things that are considerably more likely to happen, and good things that are much less likely to happen, if you do not have a university degree.

Enjoy free time? Don't go to university. Canadians with a high school diploma or less are much more likely to be unemployed than university graduates.

Trying to quit smoking? You're more likely to succeed if you have a college or university degree, according to a 2005 Statistics Canada study.

Drugs? Another StatsCan study found that having a lower level of education is "associated with elevated risks of dependence." You're far less likely to be a drug addict if you have a college or university degree. Ditto for alcohol.

You're also less likely to smoke, and less likely to become dependent on alcohol or drugs if you have an above average income. Which group of Canadians are most likely to have above-average incomes? University graduates.

Sex? University is good for that too, apparently. Women with higher levels of education are more likely to be able to reach orgasm, according to a recent study of more than 19,000 Australians.

More education may not be a cure-all for whatever ails you, but it sure doesn't hurt.

This issue of Maclean's, the University Rankings Issue, has been around for 16 years. Its purpose is to give all readers an insight into the workings of Canada's higher education system, and to help tens of thousands of Canadian high school graduates make an informed university choice.

Where you go to university matters, in terms of the courses you will take, the program of study you will follow, the professors you will learn from, the campus you will be a part of, and the friends you will make. This issue is a first step in helping you make the right choice. But there is something that matters far more than where you go to university: that you go. Where you go to university may make a significant difference in your life and future success. That you go will make an enormous difference.

A few years ago, Princeton economist Alan Krueger wanted to find out whether your choice of university matters. A straight comparison of the post-graduation incomes of students who went to highly selective American universities with those who went to less selective universities suggested that the answer was obvious: yes. The average student who entered a highly selective university such as Yale, Swarthmore or the University of Pennsylvania in 1976 earned $92,000 by 1995. The average student from a moderately selective university, such as Penn State, Denison or Tulane, earned $22,000 less.

But the figures may have merely been telling us that people who were better students in high school got admitted to "better" universities, and after four years at the better school, went on to land higher paying jobs. The raw numbers didn't explain to what degree that Ivy League education, rather than a student's own qualities, contributed to her future success.

To figure out whether going to a prestigious university makes a difference, Krueger compared students who went to highly selective universities with another group of students who had also been accepted at one of those selective universities - Harvard, say - but chose, for whatever reason, to go to a less selective and prestigious institution.

Krueger's findings were a surprise. He found no appreciable difference in post-graduation incomes, 20 years on, between the two groups of students. There are lots of good reasons for going to the best university you can get into. But it is certainly no guarantee of anything. Or as Krueger put it, "My advice to students: Don't believe that the only school worth attending is one that would not admit you. That you go ... is more important than where you go."

So go. If you get a university education, you are likely to enjoy a considerably higher income than someone who entered the workforce right after high school, or even someone who went to college. In 2000, a full-time worker with only high school earned, on average, $36,000. Workers with a college certificate or diploma earned $41,000. But Canadians with a university certificate, diploma or degree earned $61,000. Over a lifetime, each university attendee will end up pulling in about $1 million extra.

And it is never too late to go back to school. StatsCan studies have found that mature workers who obtain a college or university degree see their wages rise much faster than their peers without a degree. Adult post-secondary education makes sense, when you consider that Canadian men with a university education were the only group of males who saw their incomes rise in the 1990s.

The truth is that, for many jobs, university is now a kind of minimum standard, as high school graduation once was. In 1981, there were more young women in Canada with only a high school diploma than there were university graduates. By 2001, there were almost three times as many young women who held university degrees. Canadians are now the most educated people on earth, according to the OECD: 53 per cent of Canadians aged 25 to 34 have a college or university degree. It is something the job market increasingly expects.

Of course, as a number of extremely rich and successful people have recently demonstrated, it is possible to be immensely successful, even without a university degree. In Forbes magazine's most recent list of the 400 richest Americans, only one of the top five, and three of the top 10, had a university degree. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Paul Allen, and Michael Dell all dropped out.

It is similarly possible to learn to read without schooling, become a successful athlete without coaching, develop into a famous musician without formal music lessons, and put all of your money on the same number at a roulette wheel and win, spin after spin after spin. All are possible, but all are very unlikely. It all comes down to the laws of probability, and the difference between anecdote and statistically significant evidence - all of which you may learn about at university.

Bill Gates took a risk by dropping out of university, and it paid off. Dropping out, or not going in the first place, might succeed for you too. University is not a guarantee of success, or a promise that you will never experience failure. As the Krueger study shows, what matters above all is you. But a university degree makes a lifetime of relative success in the job market more likely, and a lifetime of relative economic disappointment considerably less so. It will be, at the bare minimum, a bit like an insurance policy - which may explain why Canadians, cautious types, have more post-secondary education than anyone else.

Canadian parents recognize that this is a race their children should enter: according to a recent StatsCan study, 93 per cent of parents with kids under the age of 18 hope that their children get some post-secondary education, and the vast majority of those hope that their kids go to university.

So make mom proud. Go.

Maclean's November 13, 2006