ROI.

Kind of a neat article discussing the return-on-investment of college degrees.  The data comes from this ranking of colleges by ROI (some appear twice because of separate calculations for in-state and out-of-state tuition).  My almae matres performed reasonably well, I'm glad to see.

In general, ROI increases with selectivity, but it varies so widely within selectivity categories that you cannot use selectivity as a proxy for value.

It seems reasonable to reject outright an institution whose ROI is less than the cost of borrowing the money to finance the degree (about 7% right now).  There's a list of 17 failures at the first link.

Comments

[Rebekka]

Mine is on the good list too, but I seriously doubt I will ever get a million out of it.

[bearing]

I did pretty well if you count my MRS degree.

[Mark]

When looking at college costs, I think that net present value is better than ROI. A very cheap community college might have a better ROI than a more expensive university, but high ROI's on small sums are not as good as modest ROI's on large sums. That said, I suspect that college major is a better for predicting income gains than the college you picked.

[bearing]

Isn't ROI the proper comparison when you're looking at whether it's worth borrowing money for it? Because you're comparing the ROI to the interest rate?