Why Every College Needs a Marriage Preparation Office

Almost every college has a career counseling office to give students a way to learn about their possible futures. The career office hosts informational sessions with recruiters and alumni to give a portrait of a field. Counselors read over resumes and compile lists of internships. My alma mater even connected me with a DC-based alumna who was willing to host me in her basement for a summer so I could save on housing. But there’s a missing, complementary office that colleges should run for their students’ benefit—an Office of Marriage Prep would let students plan for career and family in tandem. 

Family and career planning should go together, but colleges usually act as though only job planning requires deliberate study and execution. However, family does not magically come together on its own. Even single young adults who hope to get married are struggling to connect with potential spouses. As the 2025 National Dating Landscape survey reveals, only 31% of marriage-minded young adults (ages 22–35) are dating. Only a little more than a third (37%) of these young adults feel they can trust their own judgment about potential partners. 

If college is just about credentialing students for employers, this isn’t a failure of formation. An employee who has given up on dating and isn’t on track for kids has less competing for his or her attention. But liberal arts schools usually claim (rightly) to be educating for the whole of life, not just the 9 to 5. In that case, young people’s struggles to connect indicate a problem with their education in high school and college.

So what could colleges do differently to help prepare students for family life?

How to Promote Healthy Dating and Marriage On Campus

A college Marriage Prep Office would work in parallel to the career office. Such an office would host new and long-time married couples for informational talks, the same way that they bring in recruiters and alumni. Couples could talk about how they approached dating and deciding to marry. Older alums with kids might discuss how they budgeted for child care, whether they chose to step down or do part-time work, and how they navigated a later return to a full-time career. 

Liberal arts schools usually claim (rightly) to be educating for the whole of life, not just the 9 to 5. In that case, young people’s struggles to connect indicate a problem with their education in high school and college.

The Marriage Office could co-sponsor a lecture with the economics department, and bring in Nobelist Claudia Goldin to discuss her theory of “greedy jobs.” These are the jobs where pay per hour rises substantially with hours worked, so that the wage for working 50 hours a week much more than doubles the price for working 25 hours a week. Prospective parents that go into these fields may feel they have golden handcuffs that prevent them from tapering back work when their children are young. The Career Office might step back in with job advice for thirty-something alums looking to return to work after a pause. 

A religious college with a strong, shared theory of marriage would have the easiest time hosting a Marriage Office, but secular schools should still consider setting one up. A secular school would probably take a more pluralistic, choose-your-own-adventure approach to family formation. And some of these schools might be reluctant to talk explicitly about marriage versus family formation (legal bonds and partners optional), and I’m sure there would be more pitches for egg freezing and ART than I’d like. They might struggle more to connect dating and marriage—but it’s hard to give people a strong sense of how to approach dating without a clear goal in mind. Despite these obstacles, it’s obvious that there would be demand for these services even at schools reluctant to make strong claims about the goods of marriage for children and society.

Demand for Dating and Marriage Advice

At Boston College, students eagerly enroll in Professor Kerry Cronin’s classes specifically because the course comes with an unusual assignment: ask someone out on a date. The date should have no alcohol and no sex, and the student initiating has to be explicit that this is a date, not a hangout. Cronin was inspired to push her undergrads in this area after one student asked her to explain how to ask someone out on a date. The course gives the students an excuse to be counter-cultural—after all, their professor is making them do it.

At Notre Dame, Professor Tim O’Malley has had to cap his course (The Nuptial Mystery: Divine Love and Human Salvation) at 150 because so many students wanted to be challenged by his extra credit assignment to go on a date.

At Westmont College, Professor Andrea Gurney similarly had to shift to larger lecture halls to meet the demand for her Marriage 101 course.

After Covid crushed campus life and traditions, some schools began requiring students to attend a certain number of events on campus (stamping an activity passport) just to get them out of their rooms. It would make sense to expect students to all spend some time at a campus Marriage Office—to decide whether and how to prioritize dating and family life. For some students, that might mean attending a presentation on what social science can tell us about drivers of divorce risk. For others, it might mean a semester-long reading group working through Amy and Leon Kass’s Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar, a collection of readings on courtship and marriage from theology, philosophy and literature And for others, it might mean leafing through binders of “date-me docs” in the office waiting room, which function as expanded and modernized personal ads.

But all of the students at these schools would understand that they are expected to actively bring their intellect and their drive to bear on the question of marriage and family, just as they would on a future career. Inertia won’t carry them safely on to success in either domain. Pursuing a crush, just like pursing a job, requires deliberate effort to develop your natural gifts, plus a willingness to hear a lot of “no” on the way to the right “yes.”

Leah Libresco Sargeant is the author of The Dignity of Dependence, and Building the Benedict Option, and runs Other Feminisms, a substack community. 

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