The hidden value of a college degree: Graduates are much more likely to have friends

College graduates have more friends than people without degrees, according to a Survey Center on American Life survey. 

In recent years, many young people have questioned whether the benefits of a college degree are worth the cost of tuition. According to a new survey, college graduates appear to have a clear edge in one area: their social lives.

The Survey Center on American Life — a nonprofit organization backed by the right-wing think tank the American Enterprise Institute — published a report in August based on a survey of more than 6,500 US adults conducted in March and April. The respondents were asked about their social interactions and participation in their communities.

The survey found that 24% of non-college-educated Americans had no close friends and 17% had at least six close friends. Among Americans with at least a bachelor’s degree, 45% had at least six close friends, and 10% had none.

Question after question, the same social divide continued to emerge in the survey. For example, compared to Americans without a degree, college graduates were much more likely to say they had friends who could help them move, give them a ride, take them to a doctor’s appointment, or offer them a place to stay.

Across all education levels, Americans reported having significantly fewer friends than they did in a similar Gallup survey conducted in 1990, according to the Survey Center report. However, the widespread decline in socialization in recent decades has been steeper for people without a college degree.

“Americans with fewer years of formal education participate less often in community life, are less civically active, have fewer close friends, and have less social support than those with four-year college degrees,” the authors wrote. “Increasingly, the ability to cultivate strong social support is a privilege reserved for the college-educated, rather than an ordinary feature of American life,” they added.

The Survey Center report provides additional evidence for something several experts have been saying in recent years: Americans aren’t making friends like they used to and are spending more time alone. Last year, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said the US was facing an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” and raised concerns about the physical and mental health consequences of this development.

Declining participation in social institutions like marriage, insufficient access to public amenities like community centers, and financial challenges are among the reasons Americans without degrees could be having a particularly hard time making friends.

To be sure, there’s disagreement among experts about how much Americans’ social lives have changed in recent decades and the primary causes of this shift.

It’s getting harder for people without degrees to make friends

In the past, marriage, religious organizations, and labor unions were key to providing social support for Americans. However, in recent decades, people have become less likely to marry, join a labor union, and regularly attend a place of worship. This decline has been much steeper for Americans with lower levels of education, according to the Survey Center report.

Additionally, non-college-educated Americans were also less likely to be members of nonreligious community groups like hobby or activity groups, community groups or neighborhood associations, and sports leagues or workout groups. In recent decades, Americans with degrees have continued to join these groups at “relatively high” rates, while those without degrees have become “increasingly unattached,” according to the report.

“When all of these things start to come together, you’re seeing the bottom fallout of these institutions that historically have provided a grounding of participation and connection in American life,” Sam Pressler, coauthor of the report and practitioner fellow at the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, told B-17.

At the same time, Pressler said there’s a “pay to play” system in many Americans’ social lives. Public spaces that have the potential to foster social connections often come with a financial cost, and this can benefit college graduates, who tend to earn higher wages than people without degrees.

“You go to a coffee shop or you go to a bar or a restaurant, those things have dollar signs attached to them,” he said. “You go and join a gym, you’re going to Equinox or even the YMCA, that costs money.”

Even in free public spaces like libraries, community centers, and parks, the survey found that non-college-educated Americans were less likely to use them as a social gathering place. Pressler said one explanation for this could be that Americans with degrees were more likely to live in areas with extensive and high-quality public spaces and community groups.

“If you are out of those traditional structures, you have to do so much more work to schedule time with friends, to build relationships,” he said. “All of the work gets put onto you.”

Additionally, people without a college degree may also be more likely to work multiple jobs, or have roles with unpredictable hours, Pressler said. For example, he pointed to the rise of gig work in recent years. Driving during nights and weekends — prime social hours — can be the most profitable for an Uber or Lyft driver who’s looking to earn some extra cash.

“If you don’t know what your schedule is going to be in a week or two weeks if you are working several jobs, it’s very hard to imagine being able to plan to participate in community or spend time with family and build those relationships,” Pressler said.

For some people, the workplace can provide another opportunity to make friends. In 2022, over half of respondents told the Survey Center that they’d met a close friend through their work or a spouse’s work. However, college graduates were more likely to have done so.

Going to college can be a “supercharger of relationships”

Of course, some of the social benefits of a college degree date back to the connections fostered on campuses. Pressler said the college experience can be a “supercharger of relationships” and that people who don’t pursue a degree — and go straight into the workforce for example — may not have the same social opportunities.

Once students graduate, many of them move to cities where they can continue to build upon their college connections.

“You have potentially the leisure time and the discretionary income to participate in community life with other people who have college degrees and you’re also involved and meshed in these networks of your fellow alum,” Pressler said.

On the whole, Pressler said that he thinks the financial and social benefits of a college degree have increased in recent decades, adding that the decline in some middle-class jobs — driven by factors that include globalization and recessions — is partly responsible for this.

When young people decide whether to go to college, Pressler said he thinks many of them place significant value on the social benefits that can come with a college education. He said this is among the reasons many colleges’ recruiting efforts — in an attempt to attract students — emphasize the clubs, Greek life, and sports on campus.

But despite the social benefits, Pressler said this doesn’t mean a college degree is for everyone.

“I don’t think the answer is to necessarily get more young adults to go to college because of the adverse social consequences that we highlighted in our report,” he said. “Rather, we should be aiming to mitigate — and, ideally, eliminate — the educational divide in civic life.”

While Pressler said there is no “silver bullet” solution for Americans’ overall friendship decline — and the larger decline for people without degrees — he said there are several solutions worth considering.

For example, he said housing and neighborhood policies could be better used to promote connection in communities.

“This could include everything from housing policies that promote more middle and social housing, to neighborhood policies that provide micro-grants for block parties, community dinners, sports leagues, and block clean-ups that bring neighbors together,” he said.