A new Free Press column examines reasons to attend college even as the financial premium associated with a degree declines. The author argues that higher education may offer increasing social benefits, particularly through friendships, dating and marriage.

“College is a great place to make friends, date, and possibly meet a spouse.”

Those benefits may matter more as the United States faces what the column describes as a crisis of loneliness. If artificial intelligence displaces many jobs or reduces the number of hours people work, marriage and other close relationships could become more important. The title of Clara Collier’s essay, “After Work, We’ll Have Each Other”, captures that possibility.

People are also living longer, making the question of whom they spend that time with more consequential. The data cited in the column indicate that college-educated people are more likely to marry and to remain married. More broadly, they show stronger social indicators in several areas, including resistance to alcohol, drug and gambling addiction. Charles Murray examined similar patterns in Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

Among people older than 25, 64 percent of those with a bachelor’s degree are married, compared with 50 percent of those whose education ended with a high school degree. The difference is also substantial in long-term marriage. The chance that a woman remains married for at least 20 years is 78 percent if she attended college, compared with 41 percent if she is a high school graduate. Among men, the corresponding figures are 65 percent and 47 percent.

College graduates also tend to have broader networks of friends. They are twice as likely to have six or more close friends and less than half as likely to have no close friends at all. Some private-sector jobs allow people to spend four years with the same group of colleagues and maintain those relationships afterward. More often, however, workers come and go, lose contact with former colleagues quickly or never develop a strong shared experience at work.

College appears to be particularly effective at keeping people connected over time. The column notes, however, that the available relationships may not be entirely causal. It is unclear how much attending college itself produces better social outcomes and how much reflects the fact that people who would have better outcomes regardless are more likely to attend college. The author’s assessment is that both factors probably play a role.

The column therefore presents college as a possible source of support even when its precise effect is uncertain. Its conclusion is that while the financial premium from attending college is falling, the premiums associated with friendship and marriage are increasing and may continue to rise.

Those are not the only considerations. The author also writes that attending college makes less sense at the margin than it did seven or eight years ago, and discusses those changes in the full essay published by The Free Press.

The original commentary was published by Marginal Revolution.