Education is considered one of the most crucial personal capital investments. But formal education does not necessarily pay off in job satisfaction, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame.
In fact, there is almost no connection between the two, according to “Does Education Level Promote Job Satisfaction? The bittersweet interplay of work resources, demands, and stress,” by Brittany Solomon (Hall), assistant professor of management, and Dean Shepherd, the Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship, both at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, with Boris Nikolaev from Baylor University.
“Our study shows that people who have invested in formal education are generally not more satisfied with their jobs,” said Solomon. “We found that better-educated people have more work-related resources, including income, work autonomy and variety. But they also have longer working hours and increased workload, intensity and urgency. On average, these demands are associated with increased stress and decreased job satisfaction, which largely offset the positive gains associated with increased resources.”
In additional analyses, the team found that women were more likely to have a greater negative association between education and job satisfaction, and that the self-employed experienced a reduced negative association.
“Women continue to face setbacks in the workplace that can undermine the positive return on their education investments,” said Solomon. “This dynamic is especially important given the reversal of the gender gap in education, with more women completing higher education than men. We examined the idea that the association between education and job satisfaction is negative and stronger for women and found that, compared to their highly skilled male counterparts, highly educated women experience more stress at work and lower job satisfaction.”
Compared to traditional professions, self-employment offers considerable flexibility to organize the work schedule, choose the work content and decide how to respond to the job requirements.
“We found that compared to their salaried counterparts, the self-employed appear to be more isolated from the adverse effects of education on job stress and job satisfaction,” Solomon said. “We believe that alleviating this constraint is remarkable for the skilled and organizations that value and want to retain their skilled workers.”
The researchers do not suggest avoiding higher education in an attempt to achieve more job satisfaction, but recommend a realistic calculation of the trade-offs between 'good' and 'bad' working conditions and the associated stress and job satisfaction.
“Balancing the conditions that lead to both stress and job satisfaction can help employees recalibrate their values and ultimately make decisions that align with their priorities,” said Solomon. “Leaders may also want to consider better ways to deal with the higher demands of their highly skilled employees so that misusing an organization's greatest human capital doesn't backfire. For example, by removing incentives for employees to take excessive working hours, organizations can prevent employees from being unintentionally pressured to incur stress that undermines job satisfaction.
“A lot of people go through higher education to get a better job, without realizing that this 'better job' isn't actually better because of the unexpected effects of demands and stress over time,” Solomon said. “It's good for people to be realistic about the career paths they follow and what they ultimately value.”
