The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition: For decades, the best-known college rankings have tried to encompass everything from "academic reputation" to dorm amenities. But a few years ago, we stripped all that away in favor of a simpler measurement:
Which schools give their graduates the best average return—in terms of salary—on their tuition investment?
With help from PayScale, a company that maintains salary profiles of 29 million workers, we collected median pay figures for two pools of each school's alumni: recent graduates (who have been out of school for an average of two years) and mid-career types (an average of 15 years out). For each group, we divided the median alumnus salary by tuition and fees (assuming they paid full price at then-current rates), averaged the results and, finally, converted that result to a percentage figure.
10 comments:
This article raises the question to the public, that I think of quite often: Will the amount that I earn after I graduate be enough to pay off my loans taken out to attend college? I believe that after a certain amount of time out of college, with the experience that I'll have, I should be able to pay off my education. But, nothing is really for certain. I know many other students are in the same position that I am. My view, is that no college should charge people what they can't pay off in 5 years with the median salary of graduates. If the reputation of the school and the jobs graduates get don't match up the tuition costs, then that college will lose students, and possibly, the institution will go bankrupt. Society is changing, people are less willing to pay whatever amount the college says tuition is.
Hey wow, Carnegie Mellon is the highest ranked private non ivy school in this list! That's nice to see. Even though the salaries measured in this assessment were probably not the ones coming mainly from CFA alums, it does give a tiny slice of hope that we won't be swimming in debt sludge for the majority of our adult lives. What the Sarah Lawrence officials had to say could seem like a cop out, but I think it's important and definitely true, especially for us. That a lot of us know that the jobs we're aiming for aren't going to generate billions of dollars of salary, and what we're getting out of them in terms of life satisfaction and happiness are not really quantifiably measurable. Still. Nice that our friends will be making money! Yeah!
I found the grading system very interesting in this article cost vs. salary. They did not note however what specific degrees people had. If someone has a degree in education they clearly are not going to have nearly the salary of the chemical engineer. I feel the study could be improved upon if they chose a specific job and compared it across schools. I have to agree with what Kelly said regarding the cost of college overall and if we have to pay loans for the rest of our lives. I think it is interesting how school is some cases raised prices so drastically in amounts around 70%. I think schools should have some type of rule not allowing them to raise tuition so drastically inflation does play into this but for some schools a 60k dollar increase over 13 years seems a little excessive.
This article is definitely an interesting one. It is nice to see that CMU is the highest ranked private school that is not an IVY league. I agree with Reilly that the majority of the money for the CMU students stats is probably not coming from CFA students, but rather, the engineers or architects. However, there is a strong success rate in the CFA and School of Drama programs, as well. I hope that with this degree, I won't be swimming in debt forever.
Attending Carnegie Mellon was a no brainer for me. I could have gone to several other schools with little to no debt in the end, but I chose CMU because of what I knew it would do for me in the future. I also chose it for the education I knew I would get. It is a burden financially, but I think my earning power will be greater than others in my field. An example is when I was in NY last summer. Several shows allowed me to come back stage because I told them I attended CMU. I was even given a 2 hour private tour by a tech member on one of the shows with the added benefit of great career advise. This person told me that NY takes care of their Carnegie Mellon graduates. I definitely feel that graduating from CMU will pay off in more ways than financially. Now that I am here, I know I made the best decision of my life, regardless of what I owe in the end.
I have never seen an education like this before but it is a good way to look at schools and make sure that the money that you are paying now will pay you back in the long run. But this article is totally right that a lot of students going to school now are facing 6 figure cost to go to school for 4 years. I know that this makes a lot of people look at what schools they can cut down a year or two off to cut down the cost of school. I hope that people that are looking to go to school find this list and take it for what it is and use it as a guideline but not as the only thing that they choose their school. This article makes me feel great that CMU is on the top of private school list.
I agree with everyone else that it's awesome that CMU is the top private, non-Ivy school on the list. However, as other people have pointed out, these statistics don't make a ton of sense, since there are probably hundreds of different majors represented within them. The amount of money you make right out of college is probably in some way related to the school you attended, but the major you had and the career you pursued are infinitely more important, especially as your career progresses. As someone said above, I think a more useful study would be to break the study up into majors, or at least into disciplines (like Schools of Fine Arts or Engineering Departments).
Obviously, a drama degree from Carnegie Mellon leads to very different career path than a CMU engineering degree, and both may eb equally well regarded and lead to an increase in salary, but conflating the two into one study is misleading.
This article is far to general. CMU has within it many majors and 5 schools more if you distinguish the difference between stuff like CFA and Drama for example. Its cool to see CMU pretty high up on that list but I don't think that without breaking down that statistic this article gives any useful information. Personally I was kind of hoping to come out of college not in debt. As my father is an employee at CMU I technically receive a full ride, but my father messed up some paperwork and CMU has refused to give it to me as a result. I have found myself having to deal with massive amounts of money I don't have and was not expecting to have to have. So I really hope that I come out of this program making money cause I am gonna need it.
Investing in a college education is extremely risky, especially in a field so unstable as ours. Its silly to assume we can graduate and make millions. But something that makes CMU a worthy investment is the job security in the future. Not everyone is going to have their dream job when they graduate, but everyone is going to have a job opportunity because of the network connections CMU has. This article might be referring to the university as a whole - but I think it also hits home within our program. CMU alumni are everywhere - we heard about it when Joe and John came and visited campus. Its comforting to know that.
I wonder if the measurement is the average of all of majors that the college has since the salary for majors also varies. However, this ranking is very interesting to see. It is good idea to put the ranking in that order since college tuition and salary after graduation are definitely two major concerns that every student has. At the same time, it is sad how high the tuition is for every college that a student has to carry to pay back even after the graduation. I was surprised how the IVY schools are not the top rankings in this list, disproving my belief that high-ranked schools do not always guarantee high incomes.
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