Harvard researchers weigh-in on the homeschool vs public school debate

How do homeschoolers compare to their publicly-educated counterparts? Does the awkward homeschooler stereotype hold up to scrutiny? These Harvard researchers examined over 12,000 students to answer this question and found some surprising results.

Brendan Case and Ying Chen conducted this large-scale study using data from 1999-2010 and found that homeschoolers:

Parents want their kids to be well-educated and professionally successful, but they also want them to be healthy, happy and virtuous. By this broader measure of success, home schooling has advantages. Among the students we examined, home-schoolers were 33% more likely to volunteer, 31% more forgiving and 51% more likely to attend religious services in young adulthood than those who attended public school. (“Levels of forgiveness” were measured on a self-reported four-point scale, which other research has shown predicts some subsequent health and well-being outcomes.) The difference in religious participation has public-health implications, since those who attend services regularly have substantially lower risks of alcohol and drug abuse, depression and suicide. They also have a lower risk of premature death for any reason than those who never attend.^[1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/home-schoolers-schooling-are-doing-right-education-parents-bartholet-harvard-parenting-11636577345

While fewer homeschoolers attend college, that may be attributable to differing admissions standards among colleges, or perhaps many homeschoolers decided that their college options were not worth the return on investment and had other ways of finding a job and making friends.

While we believe that completing a high-paying major like computer science or engineering provides and excellent return on investment at most schools, we also acknowledge the success of the many billionaire college dropouts who picked up the skills they needed before college to build successful businesses.