Sammy and his wife married when both were still undergraduates attending the same university. They knew instantly that they were made for one another, as soon as they met. Marrying as undergraduate students presented its challenges. But they met other friends who had also just married, making it easier to fit in. And both of them found part-time work, either on or off campus, from which they could earn just enough income even while they completed their studies. Before they both graduated, though, they had decided that Sammy should go on to graduate school for a better career trajectory. It looked like a long haul at first, but they both knew that they’d soon get there, into full adult life with a job, career, mortgage, and family.
Schooling
You’ve seen in a prior chapter that a couple’s relative education levels, and their near match, can affect the couple’s decision to marry. That is not necessarily to say that spouses choose one another for their education level. Similar education levels may instead mean similar interests, family background including socioeconomic status, values, and expected income, all of which may influence the decision to marry. A traditional pattern was for women to marry up in education, but that pattern no longer holds and may in fact have reversed. But again, the correlations may have less to do with education than with other factors. Schooling itself may not mean that much in the selection of one’s marriage partner.
Inhibition
Couples also marry while still in school, before attaining their full education level. Indeed, one spouse or both spouses may go back to school after marrying, if both were already out of school and in the workforce. College or university attendance, though, has certain inhibitions against marriage. Marrying while in college may affect the available housing, food plans, grants, scholarships, and loans, not to mention the attention one can give to studies. Marrying while in some colleges also tends to go against the social scene and norms. The couple who marries in college may effectively remove themselves from their circle of friends and the social activities in which those friends prefer to engage. Marrying while in college may also require or encourage one or both spouses to take on part-time or even full-time work, to pay for married housing and expenses of the marital household. Marrying while in college may also complicate or limit the educational and career paths the spouses planned to pursue before marrying, and may require one or both spouses to change their plans as to where to relocate and settle down after college. Your marriage while still in school can face some special challenges. Expect to give one another greater support and attention than ever through married college years, as challenging as doing so may be. Things may be significantly more conducive to marriage after college graduation.
Encouragement
On the other hand, marrying while still in a program of higher education can bring the newly married couple substantial benefits. College and graduate school are a prime time to meet unmarried individuals of the same age and similar interests. Wait until after you graduate, and you may find yourself around a limited and ill-fitting candidate pool. Marrying while in college also solidifies the marital commitment earlier, to grow and reach full flower at an earlier date and younger age, including potentially with the birth of children. Marry at age twenty, and by age twenty-five, you both may be very close, settled, secure, and ready for children or already with kids in tow. Wait to marry until age twenty-five or thirty, and you may have quite a bit of growing and maturing together still to do, when you might prefer at that advanced age that your marriage was already in full flower. Marrying while in college or graduate school can also greatly simplify social life and strengthen social support, focused around the new spouse’s love and care. Studies, career choice, job hunting, and transition into the workplace and adult life may all be more satisfying, assured, and successful in partnership with a spouse. If marrying while still in school is the clear discernment and strong inclination of both you and your candidate spouse, after understanding one another’s ambitions and plans and sensing a good match, then go for it, after reasonable investigation of its impact on housing and other particulars so that you do not face any unfortunate surprises.
Sufficiency
A married couple or couple planning marriage may wonder what education for each is most appropriate and when education is sufficient or insufficient. The fact of your marriage, engagement, or engagement plans can and should influence your decisions about education, just as marriage and marriage plans influence everything else. Your individual interests now matter less, if at all, in the perspective of marriage. What’s best for your marriage is what matters, not what’s better for each of you. Some spouses may find that by marrying, their educational needs and interests change entirely, while others find that education changes not at all. For instance, a spouse already working as a roustabout or roughneck in the oil fields for good pay, if under terrible hours, in a hard-to-access location, and at significant risk of serious injury, may decide when marrying to go back to school to qualify for a professional job that has an at least equal salary but provides safer and more accessible work with hours more conducive to marriage. For another example, a couple who marry while one is in dental school and the other in training as a dental assistant might both naturally finish their related educations, for all the partnership opportunities doing so might afford. On the other hand, a spouse who marries and promptly has a child while preparing to enter graduate school in a philosophy program might wisely abandon the program for an available, good-paying, full-time job. You get the picture. Reason thoughtfully with your spouse over what education is appropriate for each of you, to support and promote your marriage. The possibilities are wonderful and practically endless.
Coordination
Marriage may require or recommend coordinating each spouse’s education. Timing can be everything in marriage and education, as in life. If, for instance, both spouses are in the same terminal degree program, each anticipating employment on graduation, but are off step by a term or year, then they may speed up and slow down their respective programs to graduate at the same time to move forward together into coordinated employment. For another example, if one spouse is graduating from a program with a good-paying job in the same field available, the spouse may take that job rather than go on to the planned graduate program, so that the other spouse can finish or undertake additional education. Adjustments of this sort are not truly sacrifices by either spouse. They are instead gains within the marriage that is the joint interest and full embodiment of both spouses. Each spouse is stronger, richer, fuller, and more secure when the other spouse and the marriage grow through their coordinated pursuit of education. Neither spouse is primary, and neither spouse is secondary, no matter which spouse appears to have the momentary advantage, because the advantage of either spouse is the advantage of both spouses. You are stronger when flourishing together than succeeding or failing alone.
Financing
Marriage can complicate but also improve and enrich the financing of education. The complicating part potentially has to do with whether the married spouses can retain scholarships, grants, loans, and gift support upon which they relied to pay for their education while single. Marrying might, for instance, cause a parent or grandparent to curtail payments of tuition or gifts of living costs. Marrying might also raise a student’s household income above the threshold for grant, scholarship, or loan support. Marrying might also require one spouse to effectively take on the other spouse’s significantly greater educational debt, not formally by co-signing or personal guarantees but indirectly within the context of the marriage. If, for instance, you marry a medical school student struggling under the weight of increasing educational debt, you and your new spouse might agree that you should pause for a time your own educational borrowing for your music major program that holds no clear prospect of a job. Educational debt can also complicate a newly married couple’s budget, as they allocate their modest income to pay living expenses while attempting to at least stay current on, and they hope soon to retire, educational debt. If one spouse brings into the marriage far greater educational debt than the other spouse, especially debt that is producing no return in more-favorable employment related to the education, the burden of that debt could potentially affect how the spouses feel about their marital finances, their relative work obligations, and at times one another. If you and your spouse cannot find peace over these sorts of issues, then see a qualified counselor for insight into solutions. Don’t let educational debt burden your marriage. Make and attack a mutual plan to retire it.
Enjoyment
In all your marital plans for pursuing, completing, and paying for education, don’t miss the opportunity to enjoy it. Those early, middle, or even later marital years with one or both of you in a stimulating educational program on an attractive campus can be great years to enjoy your marriage. The two of you may be able to attend athletics events, music shows, plays, museums, social events, and speaker events that you each enjoy while you also enjoy one another. You may also meet a wider circle of married friends among students, faculty members, or staff members, who may remain friends, supporters, and mentors throughout your life. School years can make a great foundation for a marriage. Also, appreciate the marital fruits your education and your spouse’s education may earn, not just in the financial return that knowledge, skills, and a degree can facilitate but also in the status, standing, reputation, and intellectual acuity a good education can lend. Don’t undervalue the education you each earn before or during the marriage. Support one another in pursuing the right educational programs at the right time and for the right reasons, consistent with the goals and aspirations of your marriage.
Reflection
Do you and your spouse each have the optimal amount and kind of education to promote your common marital interests? Should the two of you plan and pursue additional education for either or both of you? Can you do better for your marriage and one another by coordinating your schooling? How is the financing you each incurred or are incurring for your education affecting or likely to affect your marriage? Do you need to jointly address and resolve issues between you regarding educational debt and its repayment? Do you have a sound marital plan to retire educational debt? Can you reduce borrowing to continue and complete your education, by working together to increase marital earnings and reduce expenses? Are you finding ways to enjoy your marriage during your school years, or if you’ve completed those years, did you do so? What benefit is your marriage currently drawing or do you expect it to draw from your education?
Key Points
Education of you and your spouse can greatly benefit your marriage.
Marrying while in school can have both challenges and benefits.
Decide together what education will most benefit your marriage.
Coordinating your education can help you each achieve what’s best.
Financing for education can affect marital finances and relationships.
Enjoy your years in school together, appreciating education benefits.