CARING PROFESSORS MAKE FOR ENGAGED AND HAPPY EMPLOYEES, STUDY FINDS

Your parents likely told you to study hard so you could get into a good university or college and that would lead you to a happy and successful life.

But before you do an online search for the top ranking post-secondary institutions in the country, new research suggests that your choice of school has little effect on your well-being.

The Gallup-Purdue Index, a comprehensive national study of more than 30,000 U.S. college graduates, found that the type of school they attended — highly selective or less selective, small or large, etc. — hardly made a difference in workplace engagement or well-being.

However, graduates who had at least one professor who cared about them, made them excited about learning or served as a mentor were twice as likely to be engaged at work and thriving in well-being.

Meanwhile, graduates who enjoyed an internship or were extremely involved in extracurricular activities had double the odds of being engaged at work.

Not surprisingly, student debt hinders graduates in life.

Three times fewer graduates who borrowed between $20,000 to $40,000 were thriving in their well-being compared to those without debt. Twenty-six per cent of graduates with no debt started their own businesses, compared with 16% of those with $40,000 or more in student debt.

The average debt load for a student studying in Ontario and the Maritimes is $28,000, according to the Canadian Federation of Students.

“When a student is trying to decide between an elite Ivy League school, a large public university, or a small private college, what should he or she consider to help make the decision?” Gallup asked in its report.

“When an employer is evaluating two recent graduates from different backgrounds and institutions, which educational background should distinguish one applicant over the other, and why?

“The answers may lie in what students are doing in college and how they are experiencing it.

“Those elements — more than many others measured — have a profound relationship to a graduate’s life and career.”