History Main / MRSDegree

* ''Film/LegallyBlonde'' has Elle going to Harvard Law School so she can get back her boyfriend, who left her because she wasn't serious enough. [[spoiler:After some CharacterDevelopment, ''she'' rejects ''him'' when he tries to get back together with her, saying she can't date a bonehead if she wants to make partner in a corporate law firm by the time she's thirty.]]

[[/folder:Fan Works]]

Some women go to college because they want the education. A woman who is looking for an MRS degree, though, is in college because she is looking for a husband (going from a Miss to a Mrs., y'see), and college is an excellent place to find educated single men who are likely to make a good salary in the future. These days it mostly shows up in historical fiction. If a modern woman wants to go to college just to get a man, she'll either change her mind by the end of the story for her own edification/self-improvement, or she'll be presented as shallow, selfish, or simply as squandering her opportunities.

Contrast HigherEducationIsForWomen, although both this trope and the opposite trope can overlap if the woman wants both an education and a husband, particularly if she didn't have a [[HighSchoolSweethearts High School Sweetheart]]. (And it is worth noting that a lot of people ''do'' meet their future spouses in college, or will at least have their first serious romantic relationship.) An AntiEducationMama will likely only concede sending their daughter to college if they're aiming for one of these.

Contrast HigherEducationIsForWomen, although both this trope and the opposite trope can overlap if the woman wants both an education and a husband, particularly if she didn't have a [[HighSchoolSweethearts High School Sweetheart]]. (And it is worth noting that a lot of people ''do'' meet their future spouses in college, or will at least have their first serious romantic relationship.)

* In ''Film/{{Titanic 1997}}'', Rose's mother says, "But the purpose of university is to find a suitable husband. Rose has already done that."
** Creator/CleolindaJones mentions this trope by name in her ''Movies in 15 Minutes'' book parody of the movie.

* ''Series/GilmoreGirls'': The Gilmores are a very wealthy upper-class family from New England. Richard has worked in an insurance business and owns all kinds of important property. Emily met Richard while he was a student at Yale, and she studied history at Smith.
-->''"I went to Smith, and I was a history major, but I never had any plans to be an historian. I was always going to be a wife. I mean, the way I saw it, a woman's job was to run a home, organize the social life of a family, and bolster her husband while he earned a living. It was a good system, and it was working very well all these years."''

* Midge from ''Series/TheMarvelousMrsMaisel'' has one of these in Russian Literature. She got married right out of college and had two kids. Once she separates from her husband, she gets a job as a make-up counter girl at a department store despite being very intelligent.
** In a different incident, Midge's mother Rose, who never went to college (who going off the actor's age was born in roughly 1907) gets her husband/Midge's father Abe--a mathematics professor at [[UsefulNotes/IvyLeague Columbia]]--in trouble for this. Abe persuades the Columbia Art department to let Rose sit in some art classes as a favor to him. She then convinces the girls in the art department to move to the business school because that's where the good husbands are. Since girls getting Mrs Degrees fund the art department, funding dries up.

* A number of universities are finding it hard to shake the reputation that their female students are attending primarily to get an MRS degree. Such schools include Texas Tech University; Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida and Arizona, and Rose-Hulman Institute in Indiana. Others can't shake the reputation that ''both'' their male and female students attend in the hopes of finding their future spouse. Some even embrace this. Brigham Young University, for example, is well known for promoting a "marriage culture" (it's a UsefulNotes/{{Mormon|ism}}-run institution). Mainstream Evangelical Christian colleges are also notorious for this, because as with the Mormons they tend to [[StayInTheKitchen expect women to conform to traditional gender roles]].
** Brigham Young is an especially jarring example as they actually offer a degree in ''Family Life'' where some of the required courses are: ''Design in the Home'', ''Family Meal Management'', and ''Healthy Sexuality in Marriage''.

* Susan Patton was one of the first women to graduate from Princeton. In a [[http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/princeton-alumna-susan-patton-urges-women-snag-husband-160710403--abc-news-topstories.html letter to the "Daily Princetonian"]], she told female students to grab a husband while they were at Princeton because it was their best chance.
** She later clarified she wasn't invoking this trope so much as another one; as a highly-educated woman, marrying while you're still in college would be the best way to avoid an UnequalPairing.

* The BoysLove Omegaverse story ''Takatora and the Omegas'' deconstructs this. Omegas constantly being in heat means that barely anyone respects them intellectually, and the general opinion of most Alphas and Betas is that an Omega should never seek higher education since they can just focus their efforts on mating with a well-to-do Alpha and still live a comfortable life. Classes for Omegas in the school that forms the manga's setting are much less intensive than the ones Alphas get, as they have to take into account the heat cycle and general pre-established prejudices. However, this makes the Omegas who ''do'' want to move forward in their careers angry and resentful of the system [[InternalizedCategorism and of other Omegas]].

* In ''Anime/GundamReconguistaInG'', Saintflower Academy, a girls' school that works closely with the Capital Guard, apparently exists mainly as a way for young women to find a handsome young Mobile Suit pilot to marry. They are fairly blatant about it too, launching "raids" into the middle of training exercises in full cheerleader uniforms to "raise the boy's' spirits". [[CartwrightCurse Considering what usually happens to Gundam pilots' love interests]] in Creator/YoshiyukiTomino's entries in the franchise, it's amazing the place manages to stay in business.

* In ''Anime/GundamReconguistaInG'', Saintflower Academy, a girls' school that works closely with the Capital Guard, apparently exists mainly as a way for young women to find a handsome young MS pilot to marry. [[CartwrightCurse Considering what usually happens to Gundam pilots' love interests]] in Creator/YoshiyukiTomino's entries in the franchise, it's amazing the place manages to stay in business.

-->'''Tuggle:''' Girls like me weren't built to be educated. We were made to have children. That's my ambition: to be a walking, talking baby factory. Legal, of course. And with union labor.

If the story wants to portray the woman positively, she may be ''accused'' of having an MRS degree (possibly by a StrawFeminist), only for her to retort that 1) There's no shame in being a homemaker/stay-at-home parent, and 2) She's still a college-educated woman. Even if her actual degree is in [[ADegreeInUseless a "useless" major]] like English, art, or history, it can still land her an entry-level office job and she could build a career from there if she so desired. Her lifestyle is by choice, not because she ''needs'' a man to take care of her, and she won't hesitate to leave him if he mistreats her.

* ''Film/LegallyBlonde'' has Elle going to Harvard Law School so she can get back her boyfriend, who left her because she wasn't serious enough. [[spoiler:After some CharacterDevelopment, ''she'' rejects ''him'' when he tries to get back together with her, saying she can't date a bonehead if she wants to make partner by the time she's thirty.]]

Contrast HigherEducationIsForWomen, although both this trope and the opposite trope can overlap if the woman wants both an education and a husband, particularly if she didn't have a [[HighSchoolSweethearts High School Sweetheart]].