“Advance to Graduate Education: The Effect of College Quality and Undergraduate Majors”
Other factors being equal, college quality has a significant effect on graduate education [and outcomes].
From: The Review of Higher Education
Volume 28, Number 3, Spring 2005
pp. 313-338 | 10.1353/rhe.2005.0030
Cited 91 times according to Google Scholar
You are missing the point: by far the most important factor in obtaining a PhD is that the person wants one. It is wholly invalid to insinuate that where people spend their undergraduate years will affect, per se, whether that person, once graduated, will want to go after a master’s degree or PhD. Whether that person goes after additional education is a reflection on them, not the school.
Now, if you meant to say that going to a highly selective/elite school for their undergrad makes it more likely that an applicant will gain admission to a grad or PhD program, that’s a whole other ball game.
It’s a promising start, and on the one hand, I like the simple straightforward presentation, but on the other hand, I wish there were more options and more data (contrasting thoughts I know).
Some more specifics:
For some folks, the “Average annual cost”, net of financial aid, is the most important #, and it’s probably the right # to use as a default.
But it would be nice to also show “List price” for those who expect to receive little or no financial aid.
Even better (but probably unrealistically difficult to implement, especially early on), would be a system where you could perhaps cooperate with the colleges and show net cost, for a given households situation (enter a few datapoints like income and assets).
A map, or a “miles from my zip code” feature, displaying on the results list page would be nice. Yes, there is a way to search within a given range of a zip code, but there’s still a difference between a school at the outer limits of driveability (perhaps 400 miles for some families), and one much closer (50-100 miles or less).
I agree with the other user who suggested links for methodology and/or a FAQ.
Ideally, the data that is shown on the list results page could be a somewhat more customizable selection from the data that you already have (on the details page(s)). Yes, the user can drill down, but that’s cumbersome with large #s of results…
Optionally splitting the salary data up by major or general area (STEM, education school, liberal arts, etc.) could be useful - may be tough to do…
I think people can calculate cost-of-living more easily than they could previously have obtained accurate data on salaries. Ideally a prospective student should be able to look at what they might earn for a particular major at a number of colleges across the U.S. and use this information, together with their financial aid offer, to figure out which college would work best for their own circumstances.
I really like this tool – but it needs a way to search for specific schools once you’ve narrowed down your search. Otherwise, how can I find the data on a specific school I like without scrolling and flipping through tons of pages?
Also, this program doesn’t rank the schools. I’m not saying this is bad, but it almost seems as though this tool isn’t really comprehensive enough by itself because it only focuses on average cost of attendance and salary of grads.
On the other hand, I’m pretty surprised to see Stanford and Harvard’s average cost of attendance is only $15,000, even with their extreme outliers paying full price. That’s an impressive average.
In poking around a bit more, I see that schools that are on Heightened Cash Monitoring 2 status are flagged, but other federal or state investigation statuses aren’t mentioned. Why not? I suppose I can understand not including cases where the investigation is ongoing (though that would be appreciated), but not even flagging Heightened Cash Monitoring 1? That seems a glaring omission.
I think it would be very helpful if you could also provide a list that ranks the universities by average salary earned (after graduation) on the website so that users don’t have to keep on comparing universities back and forth. This is vital because I believe it is important to know which college provides students with the highest earnings on average.
^There’s a “sort” button you can use to rank according to earnings.
Again the earnings are from tax returns of federal aid recipients only. Since that’s where they got the data, I am pretty sure they don’t have majors associated with the earnings. That would also imply their earnings numbers include grad school graduates; lawyers, doctors, MBA’s. If you are presenting earnings of federal aid recipients only, I would think the correct cost to compare should be the cost of federal aid recipients, not the average cost of overall, and should include grad school cost as well. How is this “scorecard” meaningful if you pick earnings of group A and compare it with the cost of group B? How does that give anyone info on ROI?
I get that the gov wants students to be aware of the cost. A little education would go a long way, not a “scorecard.” After all, each individual will have to take responsibility for they are getting into in the long run. Give them enough info when they get aid and let them decide if it’s worth it for the major they are interested in. The average cost is meaningless because the cost is fixed according to parents income for need based colleges. You don’t have a 50% chance to get the average cost. If your parents’ income is over $200-250K, your chance of getting the average cost is 0.
Now, if you meant to say that going to a highly selective/elite school for their undergrad makes it more likely that an >applicant will gain admission to a grad or PhD program, that’s a whole other ball game.
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Yes, thank you, that is what I meant to say. This is useful information for a prospective student to have.
Has anybody stopped to realize that the Department of Education is pulling post-graduation earnings data from the IRS without asking the individuals for permission? Not nice, especially since the government has had so many data breaches!
I agree wholeheartedly with @fallenchemist - calling this a scorecard doesn’t work for me. Even though I appreciate what the government is trying to do - increase awareness about what the cost really is, calling this information a scorecard implies a government stamp of approval on a particular set of values and measures.
How long before the schools that rank highly on this scorecard begin to use this in their marketing materials? I don’t mean to pick on Bryant or Fairfield, as they are excellent schools, but will we soon see in their marketing materials that “the US Dept of Education Scorecard” ranks them “above both Harvard and Yale”?
Including a link to the methodology, and/or a series of disclaimers as to how to use this information, along with some of its inherent limitations. Including under each school the percentage of graduating students who were included as receiving federal aid grants or federal student loans - this will help add some degree of usefulness to the data.
@CollegeDadofTwo included three very good suggestions in #14. I would add that for schools with IM, perhaps they don’t need to provide the formula with the aid packet, but they should be able to provide it upon request. Additionally, it seems that many of these schools include some discretionary amount, based on willingness to attend, etc. There are many many posts in the FA forum about students who requested an additional look at their family situation, and were successful in getting additional aid. But what still happens all too frequently for schools using an IM formula, is that they increase tuition/fees and decrease the grants/aid over time. As students are closer to graduation, the net cost rises often to the point that junior/senior year costs several thousands more than freshman year. In the interest of cost transparency, schools should be required to list all the factors that could result in lower aid for future years.
@TedMitchell , I wanted to thank you for posting this information, and more importantly for sticking around for this important discussion.
agree with @deborahb. And agree that since the income data is only for federal aid recipients it is not truly representative and in fact miss-representative based on that fact alone as others have said. Not happy that the IRS shares income data with the Dept. of Education.
Also, @fallenchemist is right, income is not the be all and end all of a college education and scorecard is not a good choice of name.
I see this website to be possibly useful as a ‘first search’ kind of thing.
Some of the data, as far as I can tell, can only be made available through the federal government (e.g., the income data, which for all its flaws is at least based on tax returns, not the self-report garbage available elsewhere).
But W-2 data don’t take into account things like pre-tax health insurance or pre-tax employer sponsored retirement plans or even defined benefit pension plans which can highly misrepresent income data, and as has been said, income data is only for federal aid recipients.
There are so many reasons why W-2 earnings do not tell the whole story about income. We don’t even know if this is W-2 data or total income data. I assumed it was W-2 data so that the IRS can look at a joint return and break it down into the 2 people, possibly 2 colleges, possibly 2 federal aid recipients. And what about stay at home parents? I don’t think this income data is complete in any way and definitely should be taken with a grain of salt.
Ann Kirschner, Dean of Macaulay Honors College at CUNY, tweeted this week: “Show me the person who thinks post-college earnings don’t matter and I’ll show you a person with a comfortable job.”
^ But will people look at the detailed methodology or will they just look at the salary numbers?
I think this government website is of limited value based on the many issues mentioned on this thread.
(And I am concerned about the sharing of data from the IRS to the Dept of Education.)
I can reiterate much of what has been said with regard to this scorecard. The scorecard takes into account limited data and generalizes the report without true distinction as to what “Value” is. The data removes important student bodies such as non-traditional students and transfers that make up a large percentage of schools that as a result now appear to score “worse” based on the statistics provided despite their strong track record of success. For instance, UMUC rates an abysmal 4% based on these statistics, but it doesn’t state that according to IPEDS (a much more cohesive dada set that actually compares institutions) there is a large transfer rate and at least double (though still abysmal) graduation rate.
We have IPEDS data and open … why do we need a “score card” that allows for political influence into decisions that someone makes when choosing a college? How about including notices on the site for institutions that are proceeding under warning by their accrediting bodies and highlighting the importance of accreditation, something that mystifies even senators who are professors at Harvard? I notice that UNC Chapel Hill is listed as “On Probation” by their accreditor, SACSCOC, but, according to the score card, the value is simply amazing according to the “National Average” lines.
How about delineating in state versus out of state tuitions? That would factor into cost drastically for each of these state institutions…
I can go on, and on…
I understand the concept of educating the public so that they are informed consumers, but the data needs to be clearer as to the bias inherent in the data being used and how that affects these numbers.
IPEDS is expanding this year to collect more graduation outcomes measures. Transfers will be included. The existing NCES website “College Navigator” has a lot of the same information as the “College ScoreCard” (minus the earnings part). Could college “Scorecard” be re-branded as college “Navigator 2.0”.?