Success without a degree?

Success without a degree?

By a three-to-one margin Americans do not think a college degree is needed to be successful. In a Poll Position scientific national telephone survey we asked if a college degree is necessary to be successful. Seventy-two percent said no, a degree is not needed, 24% said a degree is necessary and 5% had no opinion.

Men and women weighed in with very close results on the issue. Seventy-two percent of men and women said a degree is not needed to be successful. Twenty-four percent of women said a degree is necessary to succeed while 23% of men said so as well.

Independents felt most strongly with 78% saying no degree is needed to 17% saying one is. Among Democrats, 72% said no degree was needed versus 22% who said one was. Sixty-six percent of Republicans said no degree was needed compared to 32% saying it is necessary to have a degree to be successful.

Young people polled the highest for needing a degree to be successful. In the 18-29 year old group, 42% said a degree is needed to 55% who said it is not necessary to have a degree to be successful.

Poll Position’s scientific telephone survey of 1,033 adults nationwide was conducted October 6, 2011 and has a margin of error of ±3%.

What do you think?  Vote in our online companion poll and comment below.

The online companion poll in which you can vote provides unscientific results, meaning it’s a tally of participating Poll Position users, not a nationally representative sampling.

Poll Position is committed to transparency and upholding the highest professional standards in its polling, explaining why we provide you with the crosstabs of our scientific polls. Crosstabs provide a breakdown of survey participants by age, race, gender, and political affiliation. Here are the crosstabs for this poll: Poll Position crosstabs – college degree success.

You can learn more about our polling methodology here.