Are Colleges a Hidden Marriage Market?

Marriage is still very high on most people’s life wish-lists. And nearly everyone who marries desires their marriage to last a lifetime. Why bother with vows if you don’t actually mean them, right?

Rob Henderson, author of Troubled: A Memoir of Family, Foster Care, and Social Class and prodigious social researcher, writes on the Institute for Family Studies blog that there is an under-appreciated and effective hidden marriage market that is actually hiding in plain sight: college campuses and universities.

Henderson opens his article with this curious quote from Bryan Caplan’s provocative The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, ironically published by none other than Princeton University Press,

Incidentally, the marriage market is probably the strongest reason to pay for expensive private schools. Going to Harvard may not get you a better job but almost certainly puts you in an exclusive dating pool for life.

Henderson is arguing that leading colleges are very attractive marriage-prospect pools for some very important sociological reasons beyond what Caplan is hinting at. Henderson explains,

Today, colleges and universities function as arranged matchmaking services. Charles Murray’s term of art in Coming Apart is “the college sorting machine.” The mechanism whereby people with distinctive tastes and preferences are brought together into educational institutions and the labor force.

Of course, churches can serve the same function and do it better, but Henderson calls higher education effective in arranging “assortative mating” – the sociological truism that we tend to marry people who are similar to ourselves in terms of socio-economic status, education, religion, politics, hobbies and creative interests. Henderson says that parents who leave no detail unattended in choosing and preparing their children for their college education do well to consider their children’s romantic futures in such calculations.

In other words, they want their son or daughter to attain educational and occupational prestige, of course, but they also want (perhaps unconsciously) to put them in an exclusive environment full of attractive prospects, which would increase the likelihood of a stable marriage and healthy grandchildren.

Henderson wants parents and their emerging adult children to consider how strategic the choice of college can be in this pursuit.

He cites a 2005 study published in the academic journal Demography tracking assortative mating that found if high school is your highest level of education, your probability of marrying a college graduate is only nine percent. By contrast, if you have earned any college degree, your probability of landing a college-graduate spouse is dramatically elevated to 65%. Henderson adds, “This figure is probably higher today.”

There is another important reason why colleges boost marriage choices and prospects. It is also proven “the attributes that predict educational success also predict marital stability.” Henderson explains,

Two of the strongest predictors of long-term romantic stability are intelligence and conscientiousness. Those are also the two strongest predictors of long-term educational and career success. So, when colleges screen for those traits, they are also screening for good spouses.

Henderson adds, “I’ve had many conversations with young people who describe their shock upon entering the workforce and realizing just how much their dating pool has suddenly shrunk” since college.

Meta-analysis research has shown that a university education is no longer making much of a difference in terms of attracting bright students and making them smarter. Scholars explain, “We demonstrate that university students’ IQ has declined over the last 100 years and is now only in the ‘average’ range, near the population average of 100 IQ points.”

As Caplan states in his previously mentioned book, our current education system “is a waste of time and money.” Maybe it can serve to boost one’s prospects for marriage which has been clearly documented to elevate one’s physical health, mental health, financial earning power, and overall happiness.

But the Daily Citizen suggests one’s church is a much better place to engage in match-making, as serious believers are shown to make very good and long-lasting marriage mates.

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