AUSTRALIA: Higher education does not make you happy

Put the book down and step away from the library. While you're at it, forget about the exams and essays. In fact, just forget everything you've ever highlighted in a textbook or heard in a lecture hall, reports Judith Ireland for ABC. Researchers in Australia have found that higher education does not make you happy.

Last month, the National Centre for Vocational Education Research reported that while vocational training has a positive impact on happiness both during and after training, university students get a one-way ticket to misery-town upon graduation.

While pretentious scholarly types will dismiss the report as proof ignorance really is bliss, its author, Mike Dockery of the Curtin Institute of Technology, is unsure why it has confirmed the puzzling phenomenon that people in developed countries with higher levels of education report lower levels of well-being. One possible explanation, he suggests, is to compare students' lives before and after they graduate. According to the report, university days are "glory days". Real life, with its career pressures and mundane responsibilities, simply doesn't seem as sweet in comparison.
Full report on the ABC site