Why is OSU ranked so low in roi?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Ohio State University
1

Every single return on investment calculator I’ve seen has ranked OSU low, like really, really low. It’s making me really nervous about going. I prefer to use ROI centered rankings which compare OSU to other schools like it, i.e expected earnings vs actual earnings. This allows me to see which school I should go to to get the best value vs other schools in its class.

Here are some rankings:
Brookings (1): 22/100
http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2015/10/29-earnings-data-college-scorecard-rothwell

Brookings (2): 51/100, 64/100, 40/100
http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2015/04/29-beyond-college-rankings-rothwell-kulkarni

Economist: rank 1265
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/10/value-university

Payscale: rank 435
http://www.payscale.com/college-roi

Money Magazine: rank 134
https://best-colleges.time.com/money/full-ranking#/school/ohio-state-university-main-campus

Soooooo. Yeah. I really want to feel comfortable going to OSU, but there’s no way I can when I look at the data. Please show me some good data, or some reason why it’s so bad in all of these comparative rankings.

I’m looking at majoring in finance, where it’s ranked pretty good, but those rankings don’t take into account any quantitative data at all.

2

bump? Im probably going to go here anyways but I’d like to be less nervous lol

3

To find long-term data, some (most? Brookings and Payscale are for sure) of these are using the earnings of people who graduated back in the late 90s to early 2000s, when Ohio State was a mediocre state school without much more than a good football team. I’m not sure if using data from then is really representative of the OSU of today. The Payscale notes that their methodology doesn’t work as well if the graduates of an institution have changed significantly over time.

Some other schools at the bottom of the Economist list include Yale, CalTech, and Rice. I’d take that one with a grain of salt.

Can’t say anything about the Money Magazine one.

4

Okay thanks for clarifying the Brookings and Payscale, that makes sense.

The economist is interesting, because it tries to compare based on where else you could go; so for instance, if you get into yale but probably also got into harvard, yale would be worse. I dont know, I’m sure that has some merit.

I appreciate the response; I asked around on Wall Street Oasis and they said OSU places pretty good on the Street, so I’m not too worried anymore :smiley:

5

@Aether53 If you’re going into finance you’ll be fine. Realize there are a LOT of humanities and other specialized majors that dilute the numbers a little bit. You’ll also see a lot of kids who transfer in after 2 years or something and get a crappy GPA and it’ll take them a while to find a well-paying job. It’s nearly impossible to isolate the numbers for just the people who were admitted to the Cbus campus.

The closest you can get actually is the Finance major. The minimum GPA to transfer in is about a 3.7-3.8 because of how competitive it is. The average salary starts at $54,000 right out of college with a bachelor’s.

6

Not surprising at all. Most Ohio State students tend to stay in Ohio where the salaries are lower. Many OSU grads never leave Ohio at all.

This is also a problem for alumni networking. The alumni network is, once again, centered overwhelmingly in Ohio. So if you’re looking at getting a job outside of Ohio (with a higher salary), going to OSU probably isn’t a good bet for you.

Employers outside of Ohio are not enamored of an OSU degree. It’s still looked at, for the most part, as a degree from a less competitive institution. It does not open doors automatically. If you’re an OSU grad (as I am) you have to work for everything, and you have to work very hard.

7

I have different experience. I have lived in EVERY region of the country and Ohio State Alumni are ubiquitous. Also
my D graduated this fall, did end up working in Ohio but had interviews for companies located as far away as California and Florida. Beyond personal experience see Wall Street Journal article here:

http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060

8

From another thread I know that MarcusOSU thinks OSU is a bad institution unless they start heavily subsidizing humanities. So, take what he says about OSU with a grain of salt …

9

I have to say that the Wall Street Journal article is very circumspect. According to that list, Texas Tech University, which is currently ranked #168 in the country by US News, has graduates whom recruiters perceive as being more “top-rated” than graduates of Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Stanford (or like a 100 hundred other highly ranked and prestigious institutions - UChicago; Northwestern, Vanderbilt…). That just doesn’t pass the smell test.

I do think that, for whatever reason, Ohio State graduates do have a lower salaries than peer institutions which hurts the ROI. The United States Department of Education collected data on the median earnings of graduates of college who received federal financial aid and reported that information in its College Scorecard

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/

According to data collected by the Department of Education, the median salary for an OSU graduate in the cohort referenced above is $42,600. In comparison, the other college that my son is considering, UT-Austin, has a median salary of $52,800. When I first read these numbers I thought that UT-Austin’s number might be larger simply because it has higher ranked engineering and business programs than Ohio State. However, when I pulled the numbers for the University of Houston, (a clearly lower ranked institution to OSU), I learned that school’s median salary for the cohort is $48,300 which is still significantly higher than OSU.

Now, it may be that the specific cohort tracked by the Department of Education is not representative of all OSU graduates. However, even if we limit our consideration to these specific classifications of graduates - kids who received federal aid - the data does reveal a lower salary for OSU graduates. Given the fact that the University of Houston is clearly not a peer of OSU in terms of national profile, rankings (#187 in US News compared to #52 for OSU). I have to think that this is the effect of regional pay differences, that is salaries for graduates in Texas are simply likely higher than they are in Ohio for whatever reason.

However, that conclusion above still does not fully explain why OSU trails all of its Big 10 peers. The Department Education listed the median salary for this specific cohort as follows for the other Big 10 institutions:

Northwestern: $64,100
Maryland: $59,100
Michigan: $57,900
Rutgers: $54,800
Wisconsin: $51,000
Michigan State: $49,800
Iowa: $48,700
Minnesota: $47,800
Penn State: $47,500
Indiana: $45,300

Nebraska: $43,800
Ohio State: $42,600

FYI, please don’t misinterpret this post as a slam of Ohio State as I’m recommending my son turn down his admission to the honors program at UT-Austin and enroll at Ohio State next fall, principally due to the fact that he was offered Morrill Distinction at OSU.

10

``I have to say that the Wall Street Journal article is very circumspect. According to that list, Texas Tech University, which is currently ranked #168 in the country by US News, has graduates whom recruiters perceive as being more “top-rated” than graduates of Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Stanford (or like a 100 hundred other highly ranked and prestigious institutions - UChicago; Northwestern, Vanderbilt…). That just doesn’t pass the smell test.’’

I have wondered about the same thing, and I feel that this ranking includes both the desirability of the graduates and the recruiting company’s chance of hiring from that school. Note that the employers consulted are not just wall street, strategy consulting firms, Google etc… Many emplyoers feel that they have almost no chance of hiring from top schools. Thus, good and large state schools, which have good academics and a large no. of graduating students, are high on the list.

I really do not know why OSU grads salaries are lower than that of schools like Nebraska, Indiana etc. This is the first time I am seeing this list … While the top 4-5 can be explained (NU and Michigan are prestigious, Maryland and Rutgers send their graduates in high cost of living areas where salaries are also higher), I can’t explain others. There is no data from UIUC it seems.

11

I was simply responding to the numbers cited by the OP, which are not flattering to OSU. I was offering an explanation as to why OSU’s numbers might show that OSU doesn’t represent a good investment. Location is one reason; lack of motivation might be another; reputation might be a third (it still lags behind many other public flagships).

No need to bring your personal hate-on for the humanities (subsidies? really? so glad an OSU professor is this open-minded!) into another thread. " start heavily subsidizing humanities"–that’s called being a public university. It’s all subsidized by the public, professor.

12

As osuprof stated I believe it is a combination of some schools are more prestigious, a majority of students are from and stay in Ohio, and many of the other schools are in higher COLA areas. There is also something to be said for a graduating student class that has received a good education that wants to enter the workforce with realistic expectations and desire. A view of the corporate recruiters from the Fisher job fair will reveal outstanding employers from all over the country. For what is worth D’s starting salary coming out of OSU was in the top half of median salaries for schools noted above. Ultimately, the opportunity is there for future success, you get what you make of the opportunity at OSU…

13

@osuprof, the number for Illinois is $56,600.

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?145637-University-of-Illinois-at-Urbana-Champaign

@Collegeorelse I agree that we cannot paint with a broad-bush and it is important to keep in mind that the numbers listed in my post above are for a very specific and narrow cohort: the median earnings of students who received federal aid, 10 years after graduation. What this number does tell me is that in comparison to its peers, OSU “has been” slightly under-performing in terms of the median salaries for students who received federal financial aid. However, this is data based on students who graduated 10 years ago when, as I understand it, OSU’s academic standards were not as rigorous as they currently are - (please correct me if I’m wrong on that as I’m no expert on OSU).

These numbers can’t predict any individual student’s starting salary. Moreover, the biggest determinate of future earnings potential is what a student majors in rather than where they attend college.

14

Perhaps more Ohio State students choose to go into non-profit and public service. After all, the John Glenn School of Public Affairs is one of the finest in the country. Many OSU students also go into education and social work, and those are professions that one shouldn’t denigrate. They are necessary for a functioning society.

Not everyone sets out in life to make a pile of money. The measure of a good education (as long as you pay off your loans) is not how much money you make afterwards. One can be wildly successful in terms of their contribution to society and not be making it rain. Conversely, one can make a ton of money and help cause the next great recession.

15

@MarcusOSU, certainly the numbers don’t control for individual career-choice which could account for the differences and I would never denigrate anyone’s chosen profession. My wife is a public school teacher and my son’s intended major at OSU is history and his interest is in the humanities generally.

16

@fatherof2boys, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that you were the one denigrating certain majors or programs.

I was a history major at OSU; let me know if you have any questions.

17

Thanks for all the replies; I’d just like to input that even when you account for different majors on Payscale, OSU still ranks really low. I’ve only checked for finance, but both the ROI rank and the simple net income rank show OSU in the high 100’s.

A few plausable possabilities I’ve picked up from here:

  1. OSU graduates stay in Ohio, where pay may be lower than graduates who go to places like New York from other similar colleges
  2. The data is from around 10 years ago, when OSU was a considerably worse school.

So all in all, I don’t know. Like I said, it’s either OSU or Uconn, and although Uconn seems to rank better in terms of ROI, I’ve heard OSU places better on Wall Street. I’ll probably end up here anyways. I understand that school is what we make out of it, but I’d rather have an easier than harder path if I can.

18

@Aether53 If you are hell bent on Wall Street and willing to work a little for it, OSU is definitely somewhere to go for it. Look up FisherFutures, that may be something you’re interested in.

19

If I were you, I’d go with OSU over UConn. UConn is closer to Wall Street obviously, but it’s always been known as a “back up” school as far as the East Coast goes.

It’s also out in the middle of nowhere (though relatively close to Boston and Providence and New York).

20

All this talk of low ROI of OSU is making me nervous. I have accepted their offer to do my undergraduate studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering with honors distinction. Should I think again on my decision?..I badly need a job after graduating, especially after the burden I will have to bear due to high OOS costs.