If you had it to do it all over again, would you still pursue the same level of education? Would you attend the same college or university? The same area of study?
A new survey from the Strada Education Network and Gallup finds a majority of Americans who attended college say they received a quality education. But, given the chance, about half of us would change at least one of our Big Three decisions, most commonly the course of study: 36 percent of us would choose a different major if we could. I have college regrets too, mostly that I was too embarrassed to ask Sue Castrigno for a second date. There was also that Friday night at Buckland’s, which mercifully pre-dated cellphone cameras and the advent of social media. But I digress.
Strada’s mission is to “help students build a more purposeful pathway through college or other postsecondary education.” Thus it is unsurprising that the report speculates that our wish to have made different choices “may be a function of having made decisions without complete information,” such as future employment opportunities, earning potential, or the long-term effect of student debt. “In short,” the paper concludes, “education consumers’ regret about their previous decisions could be read as a signal to improve the resources available to inform future education decisions.” However one could be as easily struck by how few Americans regret their educational decisions: nearly three-in-four of us would attend the same institution; only 12 percent would pursue a different degree. These are remarkable validations.
If there’s anyone who should regret their educational decisions, perhaps it should be those of us in Wonk World who have pushed college-for-all as the endgame. Turns out that students who complete a vocational, trade, or technical program after high school are more positive about their education decisions than those with associate or bachelor’s degree. This recalls President Obama’s remark, which he later felt compelled to apologize for, that “folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree." (He was right.) On the other end of the spectrum, those with postgraduate degrees are the least likely to say they would make different education decisions. Neither of these findings is surprising: One doesn’t pursue a vocational or professional track without some sense that this is what you want to do for the next few decades.
The most significant finding may be that those most likely to wish they’d changed their educational decisions are those with some college but no degree. This suggests that the greatest problem may be turning loose boxcar numbers of young people on college campuses who are unprepared—academically, financially, or personally—to matriculate successfully and complete their degrees. But this finding is tempered too: “Even those adults who started a degree but did not finish it consider their experiences to have been high quality: 70 percent of adults with some college but no degree and 88 percent of adults who started a postgraduate degree highly rate the education they received.”
The survey finds those who earned either an associate or bachelor’s degree in a STEM field are the least likely to report they would choose another major; those who studied liberal arts are the most likely to wish they had chosen a different field. It’s too bad that we don’t have data about specific majors, though. If art history majors are most likely to spend their days saying, “Do you want fries with that?,” college-bound students—or at least their tuition-paying parents—might like to know. Perhaps in their next survey.
SOURCE: “On Second Thought: U.S. Adults Reflect on Their Education Decisions,” Gallup & Strada Education Network (June 2017).
