Going to university is supposed to be a mind-broadening experience.

Going to university is supposed to be a mind-broadening experience.

That assertion is presumably made in contradistinction to training for work straight after school, which might not be so stimulating.

But is it actually true? Jessika Golle of the University of Tubingen, in Germany, thought she would try to find out.

Her result, however, is not quite what might be expected. As she reports in Psychological Science this week,

she found that those who have been to university do indeed seem to leave with broader and more inquiring minds

than those who have spent their immediate post-school years in vocational training for work.

However, it was not the case that university broadened minds. Rather, work seemed to narrow them.

Dr Golle came to this conclusion after she and a team of colleagues studied the early careers of 2,095 German youngsters.

During the period under investigation (the system was modified slightly this year), Germany had three tracks in its schools:

a low one for pupils who would most probably leave school early and enter vocational training;

a high one for those almost certain to enter university; and an intermediate one, from which there was a choice between the academic and vocational routes.

The team used two standardised tests to assess their volunteers.

One was of personality traits (openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness and extroversion).

The other was of attitudes (realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional).

They administered both tests twice—once towards the end of each volunteer's time at school, and then again six years later.

Of the original group, 382 were on the intermediate track, and it was on these that the researchers focused. University beckoned for 212 of them.

The remaining 170 opted for vocational training and a job.