<p>A company called Payscale did a study of the return on investment of undergraduate degrees from different colleges and then ranked the schools by the return on investment. A few BIG caveats:</p>
<p>1) This is a study which used employees who completed the company's survey, i.e., the sampling approach wasn't scientifically controlled.</p>
<p>2) It doesn't account for financial aid, which clearly affects the ROI for any individual who receives it. Hence, a "low ROI" school might yield a far better ROI for a student who receives financial aid.</p>
<p>3) Here's the biggie: there is no control for applicant quality. I.e., they do not attempt to compare a student with the credentials to get into Harvard who went there with a student who was admitted but decided to go to Indiana University instead. Likely much of the variation between schools is due to the quality of the students, not the excellence of the academics or even the prestige of the diploma.</p>
<p>The list completely changes if you actually rank by the ROI% –</p>
<p>31 Georgia Institute of Technology Public (In-State) $79,140 $1,111,000 14.2%
77 Brigham Young University (BYU) Private $58,450 $797,000 14.1%
38 University of Virginia (UVA) Public (In-State) $74,410 $1,038,000 14.1%
51 College of William and Mary Public (In-State) $74,720 $895,000 13.6%
27 Colorado School of Mines Public (In-State) $95,740 $1,132,000 13.6%
62 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) Public (In-State) $83,270 $854,300 13.1%
58 University of Michigan Public (In-State) $84,690 $875,400 13.1%
47 University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Public (In-State) $94,100 $961,200 13.1%
16 University of California, Berkeley Public (In-State) $118,900 $1,223,000 13.1%
149 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNCH) Public (In-State) $61,830 $615,100 13% </p>
<p>Payscale is not a “study”. It is an unregulated self-reporting survey site where anyone can say anything. I claimed I made $1,000,000 year as a surgeon. It deserves the waste bin. The Princeton Review data looks super compared top this gook.</p>
<p>this is one of them, but the bigger problem is the study omits students who go to graduate or professional schools which is the vast majority of students at top colleges. So a school is punished for getting top students into good graduate schools at a higher rate. Payscale is highly publicized and utterly worthless.</p>
<p>More nonsense. Anyone who measures anything by the MONEY FACTOR, salary factor or greed factor ought to have their heads examined. Didnt you learn anything from the WallStreet GREED MACHINE?</p>
<p>Well, ghostbuster, college is an enormous investment these days, and it’s hard to argue with an attempt to determine whether one will get one’s money back, and, if so, how long it will take. (This study may not answer that question very well, of course.)</p>
<p>I agree about the fact that students who go on for higher degrees might skew this study. On the other hand, the undergrad degree likely has much less influence on the eventual earnings of those folks.</p>
<p>Questions about the methodology used by Payscale aside (and those are serious!), I think the idea of evaluating the value of an undergrad degree when it is the terminal degree is good. Not all students intend to pursue graduate or professional degrees.</p>
<p>no, an undergrad degree is often what gets people into better or worse grad programs. either way 10 years out of college, your undergrad degree has virtually no influence on your earnings, whether you went to grad school or not. </p>
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<p>Payscale certainly does not do this, because schools with worse placement into grad school or schools that are more pre-professional will have their better students not get grad or professional degrees. While schools which have good placement or are less pre-professinal will have their better students opt to go to grad or professional schools.</p>
<p>It is NOT a study. There is NO methodology. (Might I refer readers to the cc sub-forum for AP Stats!)</p>
<p>And yes, as any high schooler knows, engineering pays well, at least for starting salaries. Does it really take a “study” for anyone to recognize that fact? Even Homer Simpson would say, ‘Doh!’</p>
<p>“this is one of them, but the bigger problem is the study omits students who go to graduate or professional schools which is the vast majority of students at top colleges. So a school is punished for getting top students into good graduate schools at a higher rate. Payscale is highly publicized and utterly worthless.”</p>
<p>You simply want them to do a different kind of study. Not everyone goes on to grad or professional school, but if you plan on doing so then obviously this study holds no value for you. This study should only be consulted by those who believe they will only acquire an undergraduate degree. This is not a ranking of how great the schools are, it is simply a collection of data. How accurate the data is I can’t say, but some might find it informative. One should always know the parameters of a study in order to best draw usable information from it.</p>
<p>What an absolutely worthless survey. The fact that everyone who has a graduate degree is eliminated from the survey throws all the results off so much as to make them meaningless (especially for schools from which a high percentage of graduates go on to graduate school). It’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>It looks like the rankings aren’t based on annual ROI. It’s based on the 30 year ROI, which they apparently computed as: (median salary for college grad over 30 years * 30) - (the median salary for a high school grad over 34 years * 30) - cost of attending college.</p>
<p>But your point can clearly be seen in the annual ROI column: the cheaper public schools have the highest annual ROI.</p>