<p>Public:
Million</a> Dollar ROI Colleges (Public Universities)</p>
<p>Private:
Million</a> Dollar ROI Colleges (Private Universities)</p>
<p>How is Cal Maritime not on that list but Mass Maritime and SUNY Maritime are?</p>
<p>lol did those colleges pay to get on the list?</p>
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<p>“Data came solely from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the Carnegie Foundation, and PayScale.com the most trusted and reliable sources of college and career information.”</p>
<p>I live in Massachusetts and there’s no way UMass-Lowell graduates make more money than graduates of the flagship university UMass-Amherst</p>
<p>It’s return on investment, not gross earnings</p>
<p>Yep, pierre you are confusing ROI with income.</p>
<p>UMass Lowell probably graduates a higher percentage of engineers and lower percentage of liberal arts majors than UMass Amherst. So this probably makes sense.</p>
<p>ah gotcha, dang I’m glad I’m not going back to school right now haha
I saw “Million-dollar” and I thought gross earnings.</p>
<p>the private university rankings aren’t too useful as they only factor in alumni who have earned a bachelor’s degree and nothing else. the average amount of alumni going to graduate school within 5-10 years in a selective liberal arts college is 76%. this brings down the number of test samples in small schools even more.</p>
<p>The top 10 overall (either public or private) are:
- Harvey Mudd
- Caltech
- Polytech NYU
- MIT
- SUNY Maritime
- Colorado School of Mines
- Stevens Tech
- Stanford
- Georgia Tech
- Rose Hulman Tech</p>
<p>There is an obvious pattern. All the colleges above except Stanford are specialty schools that emphasize high paying fields, such as tech. So the primary conclusion is some majors and career fields have higher average salaries than others… not a big surprise. A more useful ranking would be comparing salaries within a particular major, after compensating for cost of living differences in different locations.</p>
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<p>I’d amend this just a little. The Payscale data consider only the earnings of graduates whose highest degree is a Bachelor’s. So the conclusion is that some majors (like engineering) give you relatively high lifetime earnings with a bachelor’s degree. But since at some of the better colleges, 60%, 70%, or even 80% of graduates go on to earn advanced professional or graduate degrees, this conclusion is of limited relevance.</p>
<p>^extremely on point…=). Some of my classmates have already made more than the lifetime gross incomes reported on that list just 5 years out of school - but they had graduate degrees to help do so.</p>
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<p>Yes, this is typical whenever a Payscale.com-based listing of post-graduate pay or return-on-investment comes up. In some listings, high-prestige schools recruited by investment banks and management consulting companies show up at the top of the list as well.</p>
<p>The <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-5.html#post15975553[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-5.html#post15975553</a> can show how new graduates of different majors from the same school vary in terms of job and pay prospects (though one should use care when comparing different schools, due to different surveying and reporting methodologies, as well as the tendency of schools to have regional bias in post-graduation jobs, with attendant bias from regional economic differences).</p>
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<p>Lowell has a heavier bias toward pre-professional majors than Amherst; see their common data sets, section J. So it is entirely possible for the school-wide average pay for graduates to be higher at Lowell, even if the average pay for graduates of the same major is higher at Amherst.</p>
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<p>… and after compensating for differences in the selectivity of the colleges
(to distinguish the effects of the college education from the effects of cherry-picking stronger, more motivated students.)</p>
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The idea of the Payscale data appears to be looking for a return on investment of a bachelors degree. If persons who pursued degrees beyond a bachelors were included, it would make it difficult to isolate the effects of the bachelors at one college from the more advanced degree at a different college. Of course there are numerous other issues with this methodology, which makes the specific numbers near meaningless. I mentioned the major/career field and location components earlier. Another issue is assuming that lifetime earnings entirely relate to the school, instead of the individual. Several studies have found by far the largest component of lifetime earnings relates to the individual, rather than what school they attended. Some would have been quite successful even if they did not attend college at all, earning far more than the average high school education lifetime earnings assumed in the survey.</p>
<p>I also think you are overstating the percentage of grads that go on to earn advanced degrees. I assume you are referring to HYP type schools. This year’s Harvard senior survey states:
Princeton’s survey states:
I realize many more will pursue advanced degrees at some point, even if not immediately after graduation, so the overall numbers will be above this. Nevertheless, a large portion students are pursuing work soon after their undergrad degree.</p>
<p>For me ROI is the most important thing. Then as a businessman, I am always concerned with ROI and I am not influenced too greatly by national rankings based only on academic reputation. For me it is all bottom line results and making sure that the school is a fit for my kid.</p>
<p>I gotta say that it warms my heart to see Cal Poly SLO #9 on the list for public schools right up there with UC Berkeley. This is where my kid goes and we chose the school first for fit and then ROI.</p>
<p>So far? Awesome choice and most importantly, as long as the kid keeps his grades up and networks properly he will graduate with a job. In fact, he has had a job every summer in his field (or close to it) and he hasn’t even graduated yet.</p>
<p>Data10</p>
<p>I see the data you see and have exactly the opposite response. At Princeton 60% if grads are working and are included survey for year 1 stats … and a large percentage are liberal arts majors working for a few years before going to Med school or business school to name a couple low paying futures. I would guess those Princeton ROI figures of recent grads have little to no correlation to Princeton grads lifetime earnings.</p>
<p>Saying the same thing another way. Essentially this same data, with the same limitations, has been used to analyze which majors provide the best returns … not surprisingly liberal arts majors come out looking bad … while pre-professional majors look better. And this, of course, explains why Amherst, Williams, Harvard, and Princeton grads live their lives in poverty … but data shows they actually make a ton.</p>
<p>To me the obvious disconnect is not looking at the earnings of those who go to grad school. Given this limitation is it really surprising the ROI analysis turns out a list of schools with the highest proportion of students who take well paying initial jobs and are in careers with a much higher percentage of workers whose initial degree is their terminal degree?</p>
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<p>Plus, UMass-Lowell costs less than UMass-Amherst about $5,000 less over four years. So that also increases their ROI.</p>