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Get a College Degree - It’s Good for Your Health!

Get a College Degree - It’s Good for Your Health!
3/2/2012
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Suada Kolovic

There are myriad reasons to get a college education – better employment opportunities, higher earning potential, experiences that will last a lifetime, etc. – but you probably didn’t realize that it might be good for your health, too: A new study suggests that earning a bachelor’s degree before reaching the age of 25 is linked with having fewer symptoms of depression and having a higher self-rating of health, compared to people who don’t have college degree before 25.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Public Health, were based on data from 7,179 people who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in 1979. The study suggests that people with college degrees are more likely to report regular exercising – 63 percent of college graduates reported participating in “vigorous exercise” once a week or more, compared with 37 percent of people in the same age group who only had a high school diploma. Study researcher Dr. Katrine Walsemann of the University of South Carolina said in a statement that the findings “provides preliminary evidence that the timing of education is associated with health advances current research on the importance of attaining at least a bachelor’s degree after the mid-20s.” (For more on the study, click here.)

What do you think of the study’s findings? Do you think obtaining a college degree has a direct correlation to an individual’s well-being or do you think everyone has the potential to develop bad habits regardless of their educational backgrounds?

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