A “Mrs. degree” is a slang term for the idea of attending college primarily to find a husband rather than to pursue an education for its own sake. The phrase plays on the academic degree format (B.A., M.A.) by substituting “Mrs.” as if marriage were the real diploma. It originated in mid-20th-century American culture, when college-age marriage was the norm and women’s enrollment in higher education was rising rapidly alongside expectations that they would marry soon after, or even during, their studies.
Where the Term Came From
The phrase gained traction during an era when getting married young was simply what most people did. Before 1970, more than 80% of Americans ages 25 to 34 were married. College campuses were one of the few places where young men and women from similar socioeconomic backgrounds mixed regularly, making them a natural setting for finding a spouse. For many families, sending a daughter to college was seen partly as an investment in her marriage prospects, not just her career.
By the time second-wave feminism reshaped expectations around women’s education and careers in the 1970s and 1980s, the concept started to carry a sting. What had once been stated matter-of-factly became a critique. Calling someone’s degree a “Mrs. degree” implied she wasn’t serious about her studies or her professional future. Today, the term reads as a relic. One sociologist writing for The Society Pages described it as something from “my parents’ era, if not my grandparents’.”
How Marriage and College Have Changed
The demographics that made the Mrs. degree concept feel normal have shifted dramatically. By 2023, only 38% of Americans ages 25 to 34 were married, less than half the rate from the pre-1970 era. Research from Iowa State University found that each additional year of schooling reduces the likelihood of being married by age 25 to 34 by roughly four percentage points. Women now earn the majority of bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the U.S., and they’re doing so on longer timelines that push marriage later.
That doesn’t mean more education leads to less marriage overall. The same research found that by ages 45 to 54, education level has almost no effect on whether someone is married. People with more schooling simply marry later. And among those who do marry, higher education actually reduces the likelihood of divorce or separation.
College Still Shapes Who You Marry
Even though few people today would say they’re attending college to find a spouse, college remains one of the most powerful forces shaping who ends up married to whom. Researchers call this “assortative mating,” the tendency for people to marry partners with similar education levels. The share of U.S. couples where both spouses hold a college degree increased by 22 percentage points between 1962 and 2013.
The reasons are partly practical. People meet potential partners in the environments where they spend the most time: classrooms, study groups, campus social events, and later, workplaces filled with fellow graduates. Whether someone actively prefers a partner with a similar education or simply runs into more college-educated people because of where they spend their time, the outcome is the same. College graduates disproportionately marry other college graduates.
Interestingly, while the raw number of educationally matched couples has grown (because more people attend college), the intensity of sorting has actually leveled off. In 1962, a college graduate was nearly five times more likely to marry another college graduate than random chance would predict. By 2013, that figure had dropped to about twice as likely. In other words, college-educated Americans are still pairing off with each other at high rates, but the pool of graduates is so much larger now that it’s less of a closed club than it once was.
Why the Term Still Comes Up
You’ll still hear “Mrs. degree” used in a few contexts. Sometimes it’s self-deprecating humor from someone who met their spouse in college. Sometimes it’s a barb aimed at women perceived as prioritizing relationships over academics, particularly at religiously affiliated universities or in social circles where early marriage is encouraged. And sometimes it surfaces in broader conversations about whether the rising cost of tuition is “worth it,” with critics joking that some students are paying six figures for a wedding invitation.
The reality is more layered. Meeting a long-term partner in college is extremely common and doesn’t say anything about whether someone took their education seriously. The outdated part of the Mrs. degree concept isn’t the observation that college is where many couples form. It’s the assumption that marriage was the primary reason a woman enrolled in the first place, an assumption that made more sense when women had fewer career paths and married a decade younger than they typically do now.