Second annual Gallup-Purdue Index asks ‘Is College Worth the Cost?’

The Gallup-Purdue Index was developed to add to education leaders’ understanding of the true value colleges provide by identifying and tracking student experiences related to alumni success and well-being after graduation.

However, students who reported supportive relationships with professors were more likely to agree on the value of their degree.

Though the 2015 scores assigned to 200 national universities by the U.S. News & World Report rankings are clearly related to graduates’ likelihood to strongly agree that their college experience was worth the cost, they explain only about one-third of the variation in alumni responses.

Recent graduates may be more likely than older alumni to have student loan payments, and the more undergraduate debt they have, the less likely they are to say their education was worth it, the report said.

The steep decline in the perception of whether a degree was worth the cost startled Brandon Busteed, Gallup’s executive director for education and workforce development. Each of these figures rises significantly among those with a debt burden of $25,001 or higher.

And, the survey again found a major great shock in future career for college kids who exactly really had me confused their self in the educations: that played in experiential gaining knowledge of, on job trainings, lasting tasks, linked directly with the use of tutors and tied up greatly in extracurriculars.

And alumni who graduated between 2006 and 2015, when jobs were hard to find, were less likely to agree that college was worth the price.

The poll was conducted to allow researchers to measure college performance that focuses on what matters to the students. “Students get out what they put in, and they can get an excellent education at a wide variety of institutions across the country”. To help isolate the direct relationship between these questions, the analysis controls for graduates’ employment status and amount of student loan debt. “In our quest to increase college attainment and meet the growing need for talent in the United States, we must produce graduates who are able to thrive both professionally and personally”.

The current Gallup-Purdue Index results reaffirm the importance of supportive relationships between undergraduates and professors and other mentors. These three items were having professors who cared about them as a person, having a mentor who encouraged them to pursue their goals and dreams, or having at least one professor who made them excited about learning.

The prestige of your college has not no advantage on delivering long-term happiness – graduates from public and open-access schools reported being as happy as those who attended private, prestigious schools.